SACRED MEMORIES

In Canada and throughout the Commonwealth, Remembrance Day falls on November 11th each year. It marks the end of hostilities in the First and Second World Wars (1914-18 and 1939-1945) and the Korean War (1950-1953). In the USA on the same date, Veterans Day is also celebrated with appropriate ceremonies. It is day of sacred memories for the dwindling few service men and women remaining from the Great Wars of the 20^th century.

“Sacred?” Is that the right term for terrible conflicts in which so many died. Not just those who served in armies, navies and air forces, but even millions more civilians too.

A book review in the Canada’s Maclean’s Magazine cites the memories of an American veteran of the Viet Nam War as having given him “the profound belief that combat is a potentially sacred experience.” That experience incorporates four components of a mystical event: premature awareness of one’s own mortality, total focus on the present moment, valuing the lives of others more than one’s own, and feeling part of a larger community.

By no means did every veteran have such an experience. Nor is the experience limited to veterans alone. Families and descendants also shared something similar. As early as ten years of age I was aware that my paternal grandmother and my father’s sisters felt that way about Remembrance Day. When the Vimy Ridge Memorial was dedicated in 1936, my aunts travelled to France to attend the ceremony. One of my father’s elder brother’s had died in the Second Battle of Ypres in April 1915. His name is forever sculpted on the Vimy Ridge memorial along with the names of thousands who has no known grave.

Another brother had been taken prisoner in the same battle at Ypres. Though he lived into his seventies, his three and a half years in a German prison camp ruined the rest of his life. Eligible for military service, my father was exempted because he was the only remaining male able to support his parents in their old age. So too was my future father-in-law.

I was too young to serve in the military in World War II. My older brother was wounded in the Normandy campaign in 1944. Several of my classmates did serve, however, and the chap who sat behind me in class died in the Battle of the Bulge in France while serving in the US Army. Since then I have marked Remembrance Day in the churches where I was pastor. Those services were usually held on the Sunday closest to Remembrance Day. On November 11^th there is a community ceremony at the cenotaphs in each community as well as at the National War Memorial in Ottawa.

My wife frequently reminds me that civilians too also served in our nation’s war effort on the home front. During high school, she spent three summer vacations working in various roles. For two summers she was a civil servant, the third she worked as a farm labourer in the Ontario Farm Service program. Those same summers I too was a farm labourer.

While I may quibble with these being “sacred memories,” I do feel that our work was as essential to the war effort as on the battle front.

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