This month’s United Church Observer reminds us that we live in an interesting time … one of the articles raises the question of acknowledging and commemorating Remembrance Day in a Church that has decided that Peace is the preferable option. The question is raised – what do we do? We have two very distinctive camps in our congregation – one that wants a traditional Remembrance Day observation, and the other that wants perceived glorification of war and violence …
Reading the question saddened me because it means as a society we’ve failed in living out our Remembrance of War and the impact it had and continues to have. The challenge today is to hold back the rabid nationalism that has touted ALL things military, and in many ways has overshadowed the solemn reminder Remembrance Day offers of the price that has been paid to grant us the peace we so easily enjoy.
I will go out on a limb of sorts today and say that I have never met a veteran of any war or armed conflict who has demanded the kind of respect we’re being told should be accorded to our soldiers today. Instead, these men and women who have gone into battle wearing the uniform of our nation, have returned home and have appreciated the respect they’ve been offered, without ever having asked for it.
In truth, most of the veterans of the two world wars and the Korean conflict that I have had the opportunity to sit down and get to know have repeatedly mused on the futility of war as a means of solving ANYTHING, and have yearned for us – you and I – the non-combatants, to learn something from their sacrifice and at the very least STOP glorifying war.
They want us to respect and support the soldiers, who like them have returned home forever changed by their experience, but none of them see value in glorifying war and the devastation it wreaks across nations and lives.
One of the greatest honours I think I have been blessed with in my ministry has been the ability to hear the stories and experiences directly from veterans of every war. The time I spent sitting with men with names like Herb, Franklin, George, Kenny, Jim, Ernie, and Scott as they related their memories of serving on distant battle fields and returning home forever changed by those experiences, has left an indelible impression on me … some, like Scott were horrendously wounded and spent months recuperating in hospital beds from Afghanistan through Germany until he was finally able to come home to Canada … while others like Herb spent the better part of 80 years carrying the memories of what happened on a battle field called Vimy one spring morning when thousands of troops poured over the top and faced an unimaginable horror of shells, bullets and death … and ALL of them have the same experiences my Grandfather admitted to when he shared his war stories with me.
Grandpa, had served in the Royal Canadian Navy for 6 years during world war two, having signed up when the war started and left his home and family in Chesley to go off on what he thought would be a grand adventure. Years later he spared me many of the stories of actual battles and the suffering he had witnessed, choosing instead to talk about the storms his tiny Corvette faced in the North Atlantic, and regaling me with tales of Polly the parrot he bought for $5 dollars during his trek south through the Panama Canal. Polly returned to conservative Chesley with the remarkable ability to swear like a sailor … and few who met ‘The Elliot’s parrot’ forgot him – much to the embarrassment of my Grandmother who threatened to wring his neck on a regular basis … Polly for his part was just repeating what he had learned living on the ship with Grandpa.
Grandpa did at times talk about the less glorious side of war. He talked about watching ships sink after being torpedoed in the convoys he was part of – he was one of a handful of Canadian Sailors who did the Murminsk run to Russia three times and lived to tell the tale … he talked about shelling a sub that surfaced in the midst of a convoy, only to discover as the last man came out of the hatch with a Union Jack draped over one shoulder and a picture of the King in hand, that the sub was a friendly and not a u-boat. But what haunted Grandpa’s mind at night when he was trying to sleep was the incessant cries of sailors that had to be left behind in the cold Atlantic waters after their ships has been torpedoed and sunk.
There was no time to stop and retrieve them. The convoy had to continue on, so hooks were used to pick up what survivors they could grab, and the others were left in the water calling for help and crying for their mothers, as the convoy speed away … Grandpa said quietly once that he still hears their voices at night … especially the young men calling for their mothers …
To my Grandfather, and to the other veterans I’ve met who have stood on distant battle fields and faced death all around them, there is no glory in war … only destruction, devastation and suffering … they have never come home demanding that we remember them or their sacrifice. They have never stood up and insisted that we honour them. Instead they came home, carrying a heavy burden, and knowing the cost of peace.
Most spoke of the futility of war … One, a gentleman named Franklin shared with me his experiences of coming home and feeling out of place. He put many of his reflections to paper creating a small book of poems that he shared in the years prior to his death. One, written about sitting on a hillside over a military cemetery containing the fallen from both sides of the conflict is a powerful reminder that in war the uniform only matters until death comes …
(From the land beyond the grave)
The shades of night are falling
On a cross-enstudded field,
‘tis the resting place of hundreds
Of the Nazi marksmen’s yield;
While not far over yonder,
Less than half a league away
From the graveyard of the Khaki,
Are the gravestones of the Gray.
There’s one common soil to hold them,
Warmed by the selfsame sun,
And the wind that blows o’er Khaki,
Wails its path across the Hun.
To, the bees, by nature’s bidding,
Recking not from where they grow,
Nix the nectar from the blossoms
Off a friend with that of foe.
Hear the Bells on hillside chapel
Sounding out the Vespers call,
Tolling out in common volume
On the sleeping, one and all.
See the peasants wending mass-ward,
Up the path at eventide,
Sign the cross with equal fervor
To the dead on either side.
Comes the stealthiest of hushes,
On this hero-strewn lea,
And the spectres of the corpses
Live in forms they used to be;
But, one thing alone is lacking,
‘tis the longing to affray,
And in one forgiving mingle
Are the Khaki and the Gray.
Gone is all their warring spirit,
Followed by their marital mien,
Love has gathered in their heart-reins
Where but hatred once had been.
Lo! They speak in bated whispers
Of the grief that is to be,
With the last and western problems,
And the wars near hallowed sea.
They decide, in ghostly murmurs,
To tender on this plea –
‘Let war hatches all be sunken
In some unrelenting sea.”
So they spake, ‘til dawning flares
Heralding in the rising sun,
Hastens on their prompt adjourning,
Sends them back from whence they’d come.
But they journey back together
To that haven they must go,
For he has but one lone barracks
For the warrior, friend and foe.
Now to all the worldly salons,
Who we, from war, would save,
Pray be guided by this venture
From the land-beyond-the-grave.
(Franklin E. Mooney, poet, soldier and friend.)
Franklin E. Mooney, my grandfather Frank, and all the other veterans I’ve been privileged to share time with, have taught me over and over that our responsibility on November 11th, is to stand and glorify war, but to remember the fallen – both military and civilian, and to honour that sacrifice by striving to maintain, share and spread the peace …
After a century of war and armed conflict, our responsibility is to Remember and to care enough to create a world of peace …
May it be so – thanks be to God … Let us pray …
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