Remembrance Day

Yesterday was Remembrance Day, or “Veteran’s Day”, as it is called in the USA. All around the world, people stopped on the 11th hour of the 11th day on the 11th month to remember those who fought for our freedom in the past and to think of those who are fighting now for the freedom of others.

In Canada, where I’m from, we have a wonderful tradition of pinning a plastic poppy to our coats and jackets from the first of November until Remembrance Day. The poppy is a respectful reference to a poem called, In Flanders Fields, by John McCrae, a Canadian doctor, who served at the front lines during the Great War, as the first one was called.

During the Second Battle at Ypres, he wrote, “In Flanders fields the poppies grow between the crosses row on row ...” It is a famous poem that is recited on Remembrance Day every year. It’s written from the perspective of dead soldiers who beg us to take up their quarrel and to bear the torch that they throw from failing hands. It is a beautiful and sad poem, which captures the hopes of soldiers on a mission, as well as the finality and sadness of death.

I’ve been to Flanders fields. Flanders is the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium that lies to the north of its capital, Brussels. War maps of the area are crammed with symbols showing battle sites, memorials and cemeteries from both world wars. On a sunny day, endless fields of grain bask in the light and sway gently in the breeze.

But, on a cold, rainy day, it is desolate and miserable. The flat land hides nothing. You can easily imagine the misery of a ground war. Rain pools in the furrows and joins quickly with groundwater to reform the ancient shallow sea that once covered the whole area. And the mud. You’ve never seen so much mud. During the Great War, tanks were mired for weeks in the muck and whole divisions were dispatched to dislodge equipment. Horses sank. Men died of exposure and exhaustion and disease.

It was a beautiful sunny day in St. Louis yesterday; the kind you dream of in the autumn with a blue sky and the last of the deep orange and crimson leaves barely clinging to nearly barren branches. At eleven o’clock, we paused and thought about our families. We thought about my father-in-law, a fighter pilot for six years in WW2, who would weep inconsolably at the local cenotaph on Remembrance Day every year. We thought of my mother-in-law, whose first husband never returned and whose brothers all signed up to fight as well. We thought about my grandfather who also served from the sky and my step grandfather who could never talk about the land campaign in Italy.

And, we said thanks. Thanks for our freedom. Thanks for your bravery.