At Home in Hespeler

Reposted from Nov 11, 2006. Lest we Forget.

Remembrance

In Flanders Fields

Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army
IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Remembrance In Flanders Fields, Remembrance Day

It’s time to come out: four years ago I anonymously began a satire blog called The Canadian Folk Collective. I decided to roll anonymously because I didn’t want what was written there, which was meant to be fictional and over the top, with what I wrote here. I wrote about five posts, and never got back to it, although I often thought about it. Even had a few false starts along the way, but after Snow ball fights at David Suzuki’s Global Warming Tour Finale in March 2007, I never updated it again.

In November 2006 there was a couple of controversies going on around Remembrance Day, the white poppies and the guys who peed on the cenotaph at Remembrance Day services in Ottawa. In response, I wrote a post at the Folk Collective called Wearing White & Piddling on the Cenotaph:

Ottawa – Remembrance Day

We were invited to play at the cenotaph and accepted with some reluctance, as these ceremonies tend to be more conservative than we are comfortable with. Tippy was out of the hospital and doing fine, but had been told to drink lots of fluids. As such he arrived with a 2L jug of water, and spent most of this time drinking it.

We had been asked to provide a short show before the vets parade arrived at ten-thirty. This we did, playing from our repertoire of war-based material. Unfortunately, we only play anti-war songs Ballad of the Green Beret, Give Peace A Chance that sort of thing. Apparently this crowd was more in the mood for Battle Hymn of the Republic than Eve of Destruction.

While we might reasonably have been able to figure that out, I don’t know how we could be expected to know that Stevie’s poppy would give offense. Stevie had bought a white poppy from some guy in Edmonton, as a symbol of peace. He explained to Stevie that the white poppy told people you believed in supporting our troops by not sending them to war. The white indicated her pacifist views, while still supporting the young men who, frankly, are not smart enough to know that they are pawns of the imperialist intentions of the ruling elite.

But the Vets and other members of the Legion somehow found this quite sane view insulting. As soon as services where over, Tippy went to one to ask where the bathroom was:

“Excuse me, can you tell me where the toilet is?” Tippy asked an older gentleman.

“Hey, what do you think your doing wearing that white poppy?” he yelled at Stevie.

“I am supporting our troops, by supporting the peace.” she answered very reasonably.

“No really sir,” said Tippy. “I drank a big jug of water…”

“You support the troops by supporting peace?” he asked incredulously. “Do you have any bloody idea what the poppy represents?”

Stevie was ready for this one. “It represents the brutality of war, it’s blood red colour a symbol of the blood of our children that has been left on the field of battle.”

“If you could just tell me before…” Tippy tried again.

“You have children fighting then?” he asked.

“No, I have no children,” said Stevie. “I mean our children as in the collective young of the country.”

“Well George over there, he has a son who was lost in battle, let’s ask him what he thinks. Oy, George,” he yelled. George came over, and he said, “this one here says your William shouldn’t have been fighting, but was too stupid to realize it. What’s more that he is collectively all of ours, not just yours.”

“Oh?” he said looking at us. “You cried when William died then?”

“No,” we said. I was about to say “Sorry for your loss,” or some such, when he said “How about a good swift kick in the groin then, and you can get an idea of the hurt, although I’d have to stand here kicking you for the next six months to give full effect.”

“No thank you,” was all I could muster, when he said to Stevie. “So you would wear your cowards poppy in honour of my son, would you?”

She was about to reply, when I heard someone yelling from the other side of the cenotaph.

“What the hell are you doing?” someone yelled.

Tippy came running around with his pants lowered. “I’m sorry sir. I drank a big bottle of water, you see. For medicinal purposes,” he was saying. As he ran out, we saw an old vet, about 75 years old, running after him and belting him over the head with a cane.

“What happened?” the fellow we were talking too asked, and the old fellow with the cane said: “he was pissing on the memorial.”

“Don’t worry,” said another gentleman with a camera, “I got pictures.”

Humour, Remembrance

nb:  The official Lament of the Canadian Forces, played to honour fallen soldiers, is Flowers of the Forest.

Remembrance Flowers of the Forest, Lament, November 11, Piper, Remembrance Day

Fifteen year old Johnny Bower lied about his age to join the Canadian Army in 1940. “I had to,” he says. “All my buddies where there.” He was called up by the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders and shipped to England, where he spent the war until discharged in 1944. Last night, the last goalie to win the Stanley Cup as a Toronto Maple Leaf (along with legend Terry Sawchuck), recited Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae’s In Flanders Fields during a pre-game ceremony at the Air Canada Centre.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Remembrance Johnny Bower, Nov 11, Toronto Maple Leafs, WWII

Reposted from Nov 11, 2006. Lest we Forget.

Remembrance

This is from last November 10th, and looking back on it, it bears repeating:

Why Wear the Poppy?

The inspiration for this column came from Father William J. De Souza’a Column in today’s National Post, Take Up Our Quarrel.

Every year the question of why we wear the poppy comes up, and every year I have felt unsatisfied with the answer. This year, with the Afghanistan mission and the ‘surrender poppy’ in the news, the question is more important, the answers less satisfying.

We wear the poppy because of the reference to it in Lieut. Col. John McCrae’s (1872-1918) iconic poem In Flanders Field. His image of the poppies growing on fresh graves, against a back drop of white crosses, creates a powerful visual:

In Flanders Field the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row.

It is through this visual that the poppy has become universally recognized as the symbol of dead soldiers. However, the poem doesn’t stop at providing a nice visual connection between the WWI battlefields and modern day Canada. It also provides with the reason why we should wear a poppy.

The speaker of the poem is not the poet, John McCrae; it is the freshly dead young soldiers who lie in the Flanders graves:

Between the crosses row on row,
that mark our place…

We are the Dead, Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields

It is not ambiguous, you are being spoken to by the dead, their story being given. But the dead also issue a demand to us:

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.

And that demand from the dead, that is the reason we wear a poppy. The poppy is a convenant between you and them, by wearing it you are committing to take up their quarrel. It is not enough to remember them, we must also remember why they died, why they made the sacrifice they did. And they are not subtle in reminding us so:

If you break faith with those of us who die
We shall not sleep, though the poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Be sure to wear a poppy tomorrow, and remember that by doing so you are keeping the faith with those who die; and that means taking the torch from their failing hands.

And please, please go to your local cenotaph tomorrow, and show the boys who are still here that we have not broken the faith.

Remembrance

– There’s a new “Canadian Military Personnel” website that pays tribute to those “who gave their lives serving Canada,” called Fallen Canadians.

– A great article here by David Warren on the just how out of touch those who buy into global warming are. Meanwhile, Greenpeace builds an ark. (h/t Joanne)

– This line, about Canada’s aboriginals, caught my eye:

Canada’s native Indians are so angry about the government’s failure to improve their often-impoverished living conditions…

Governments fail to improve people living conditions, it’s a little admitted, always reliable, fact. If you want your life improved, it requires doing it yourself.

– Now this is funny, thanks to Road Hammer for finding it.

Economic Fundamentalism, freedom for the individual is the only truly progressive policy, Global Warming, Going... Going... Gone Nuts For The Environment, Paris, Remembrance, Vets

Farewell and Godspeed to Percy “Dwight” Wilson, who passed away in Toronto yesterday morning at age 106.

Wilson was one of three remaining vets when the Dominion Institute created a petition asking the federal government to grant a state funeral for the three remaining WWI vets. Victor Clement passed away in February, leaving John Babcock as Canada’s last remaining WWI vet.

Remembrance, Vets