Armistice Day...

[St. George]

Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae was assigned as the Surgeon to the Canadian First Field Artillery Brigade.

He had served during the Boer War, and was no stranger to hardship and carnage, but the fighting in the Ypres Salient was so horrendous, that it caused him to write this as a sort of release, after he'd just buried a friend.

It was penned at the Dressing Station on the banks of the Canal de l'Yser.

Dissatisfied with it, McCrae tossed the poem away, but a fellow officer retrieved it and sent it to
newspapers in England.

'The Spectator', in London, rejected it, but 'Punch' published it on 8 December 1915.

He died while on active service on the 28 day of January, 1918.

Before his death, he wrote:

'In Flander's fields the poppies grow
Between the crosses, row on row.
That mark our place; and in the sky,
The larks, still bravely singing, fly,
Scarce heard amidst 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 lift it high.
If ye break faith with those who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies blow
In Flanders fields.

After the Great War, this poem was read at Armistice Day gatherings, celebrating the end of the 'War to End All Wars', on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

Like Decoration Day - it was a time for reflection and for cleaning the gravestones of loved ones.

Then - some bright soul decided that - since folks were generally all off work - that they could also use their time to buy things - and they could buy even 'more' things and go places to spend money if they combined a couple of days set aside by a grateful Nation to honor their war dead, and re-named them to call them 'Veteran's Day' - and thus - the four-day weekend was born.

Go - buy stuff, and enjoy yourself - but in between trips to the mall - swing by the cemetary and take just a couple of minutes to tell someone 'Thanks'.

They'll appreciate the gesture.

Vaya,

Scouts Out!

[WaddWatsonEllis]

St George,

As a kid (around 9-10), my father was stationed at Toul Rosieres AFB in France

So I did the tourist thing with my parents .... St Mihel, Verdun, the works.

But a single place changed how I felt about war and soldiers.

There was a row of bayonets piercing the ground, surrounded by WWI concertina wire.

But to understand this, one must go back to WWI and imagine the horrors of life in the trenches.

Imagine a squad about to 'go over the top' ... and as they stood there in the near-frozen water at the bottom of the trench, soaked by the weeks-long continuous rain, they must have wondered how many of them would be returning, and wether that group would include the persons wondering.

Just before they were to go over the top, the weeks of rain finally had the most gruesome of effects.  The trench walls gave way, and swallowed up the poor soldiers in the nearly liquid mud. The soldiers must have drowned in the mud that closed in over them, and burdened down by their equipment and long rifles with their bayonets attached, could not escape.

Back to 1959 when I was there ... all that was left visible was a row of rusting bayonets ... but the awful truth was that under each of those bayonets was a soldier, somebody's son, waiting to go over the top.