11.11.09

[pecunium]

It's been 91 years since 11 Nov. became a date of fame. It's been 95 since the start of the reason that date became so known, to so much of the world.

In the States we've made it into, "Veterans' Day", which appalls me. We have a tradition of that. Memorial Day was, originally to recall the dead of the US Civil War.

Which is what so galls me about the change in this day. It wasn't about us. It's not about the veterans, not the living, not the dead. Not the famous ones, like Roger Young, nor the lesser known like Michael Vega or even the mytholgised, like Willie McBride.

It's about life, and death and the birth of hope.

War, I suspect, like poverty will be always with us, but for a brief chunk of time a huge part of the world thought they might manage to keep alive the horror of this war, to prevent the horror of another one. Go to Google Canada and be reminded that this isn't a US holiday. In Britian, they had two minutes of silence, broadcast from The Cenotaph, in Canada they do much the same today.

Yes, they have incorporated all the dead, of all their wars, but the poppies on the field, and in the lapels, and on Google.ca today all point to that moment, the moment in 1918 when the guns fell silent, when men could again rise up from the mud of their giant living grave and look to each other as people, not targets.

My campus, where I am writing this, has lots of hummocks, where the spoil from flattening the hill to put classrooms has been heaped. I can look from the first one I come to when I am done mounting the steps to the top, and see to the one before the library buiding I am in now. It's about 200 yards; which is about the furthest the front lines were.

It's the space across, "no man's land". The gap which millions of men failed to cross, in more than 4 years of killing and dying. 200 bloody yards.

The little hillocks make it more real than any attempt I've tried in the past. Seeing it as rolling ground, limited in sight by buildings, and isolated from expanse by virtue of no more land than the 1/2 mile of the hilltop keeps the far distance from making the battlefields of Verdun, the Somme, Belleau Wood, Passchendaele, Gallipoli, and all the lesser names, known but to those who lived in them, real.

600,000 men died in trying to get across the Somme battlefield. I look across 200 yards and I can't imagine 20,000, much less that 20,000 died in the first day.

And we've lost that. We make it about, "veterans", which perverts it twice. Not only does it lose the sense of hope and remembrance which was meant when we declared a holiday to remember the Armistice, it also shifts the focus to living people. I can go to Applebee's and get a free lunch, or to Knott's Berry Farm and get in for free.

Big Whoop. It's not about me. It's about not needing to sing this again.

Comments

[izzydesan.livejournal.com]

Very powerful post. At the local event today, I saw a man wearing a poppy - I didn't understand the meaning of it until I read your post. I always think of this as Armistice Day first and Veteran's Day second, and am saddened that people do not remember the original meaning as well and that with all the speeches and parades it is not mentioned. I even failed to mention it in my posts today, even though I thought about it first thing this morning.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Hey Terry, it's good to remember, and you can bet I'll post a link to "A Pittance of Time" sometime today. Like you, I'd rather the US had left today a day to remember the Armistice, and those who fought and died in The Great War, but all the holidays have been perverted now. There isn't a one of them that hasn't somehow mutated away from its original intent.

So I will thank you for your service today, and I'll remember what happened at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month too.

[kestrels-nest.livejournal.com]

Thank you, Terry.

[goldjadeocean.livejournal.com]

Thank you. Remembrance Day is incredibly important here--it's good to see that recognized.

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

I can't say that it appalls me --saddens, yes, but Holidays have a way of mutating (like adverbs) from the specific to the general, and in retrospect it's difficult to hang on to the concept of "the war to end all wars". I'd just as soon have seen this commemoration fade away as the last people to have first-hand experience with the event die off, and have some aspects of it switch to Memorial Day or Armed Forces Day, but I suppose it does no harm for people to reflect upon War, and Serving Ones Country, for a few minutes two or three or more times per year.

And yes, though born ten years (more or less) after that war, I intend to persist in calling the 11th of November "Armistice Day", and in concentrating on that aspect of its commemoration.

[sylphslider.livejournal.com]

Thanks. It's nice to see something other than the rampant nationalism going on today.

I, too, think today is about celebrating the peace and mourning the dead. I just wish I could have said it as well as you did.

[martyn44.livejournal.com]

Perhaps a better remembrance of all those men - like my grandfather, a 42 year old miner, union organiser, parliamentary candidate to be (in a very safe seat) and father of eight with two more to come (my father and his twin) who vanished in the swamp of the Somme - not to send their grandchildren and great grandchildren off to die on even more vainglorious and futile adventures. Sometimes I think Remembrance Day (whatever it is called) is just an excuse to forget the other 364 days.

Sorry, but meaningless death has borne down hard on me today.

[gerisullivan.livejournal.com]

Thank you, Terry. I'm linking to your post shortly.

[chris-goodwin.livejournal.com]

Terry,

Thank you for writing this. This is what today is supposed to be about.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

I don't know much in the world that's sadder than reading something like this - it's from Rilla of Ingleside, written in Canada in 1921. I feel sure that L.M. Montgomery believed it as she wrote it:

'"Rilla, the Piper will pipe me 'west' tomorrow. I feel sure of this. And Rilla, I'm not afraid. When you hear the news, remember that. I've won my own freedom here–freedom from all fear. I shall never be afraid of anything again–not of death–nor of life, if after all, I am to go on living. And life, I think, would be the harder of the two to face–for it could never be beautiful for me again. There would always be such horrible things to remember–things that would make life ugly and painful always for me. I could never forget them. But whether it's life or death, I'm not afraid, Rilla-my-Rilla, and I am not sorry that I came. I'm satisfied. I'll never write the poems I once dreamed of writing–but I've helped to make Canada safe for the poets of the future–for the workers of the future–ay, and the dreamers, too–for if no man dreams, there will be nothing for the workers to fulfil–the future, not of Canada only but of the world–when the 'red rain' of Langemarck and Verdun shall have brought forth a golden harvest–not in a year or two, as some foolishly think, but a generation later, when the seed sown now shall have had time to germinate and grow. Yes, I'm glad I came, Rilla. It isn't only the fate of the little sea-born island I love that is in the balance–nor of Canada nor of England. It's the fate of mankind. That is what we're fighting for. And we shall win–never for a moment doubt that, Rilla. For it isn't only the living who are fighting–the dead are fighting too. Such an army cannot be defeated.

"Is there laughter in your face yet, Rilla? I hope so. The world will need laughter and courage more than ever in the years that will come next. I don't want to preach–this isn't any time for it. But I just want to say something that may help you over the worst when you hear that I've gone 'west.' I've a premonition about you, Rilla, as well as about myself. I think Ken will go back to you–and that there are long years of happiness for you by-and-by. And you will tell your children of the Idea we fought and died for–teach them it must be lived for as well as died for, else the price paid for it will have been given for nought. This will be part of your work, Rilla. And if you–all you girls back in the homeland–do it, then we who don't come back will know that you have not 'broken faith' with us. '

Though I think there's something to be said for its truth, too. If the Armistice didn't end wars, it ended *that* war, at least - and I think the world really would have been a different and worse place if Canada's allies had lost that war.

[qp4.livejournal.com]

I think the same thing. (http://qp4.livejournal.com/135837.html) There's a lot of Canadians on the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme. I read a book about some Newfoundlanders that were there, and I suppose still are, somewhere.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

The Blue Puttees.



(written by Bob Hallett / Based on traditional)

Two recruiting sergeants came to the CLB,
For the sons of the merchants, to join the Blue Puttees
So all the hands enlisted, five hundred young men...
Enlist ye Newfoundlanders and come follow me

They crossed the broad Atlantic in the brave Florizel,
And on the sands of Suvla, they entered into hell
And on those bloody beaches, the first of them fell...
Enlist ye Newfoundlanders and come follow me

CHORUS:
So it's over the mountains, and over the sea
Come brave Newfoundlanders and join the Blue Puttees
You'll fight the Hun in Flanders, and at Galipoli
Enlist ye Newfoundlanders and come follow me

The call came from London, for the last July drive
"To the trenches with the regiment, prepare yourselves to die"
The roll call next morning, just a handful survived.
Enlist ye Newfoundlanders and come follow me

CHORUS

The stone men on Water Street still cry for the day
When the pride of the city went marching away
A thousand men slaughtered, to hear the King say
Enlist ye Newfoundlanders and come follow me

CHORUS (x2)

Enlist ye Newfoundlanders and come follow me