On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day in the eleventh month one hundred years ago, guns fell silent all along the Western front. Armistice day. The Great War had been won, and lost. There would never be such a conflict again, of that they were all certain.
Well, we all know our history. The child born on this eleventh day will be the same age at the hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War, as were those young men who fought and died in it at the time.
So today at that same hour, on the same day in the same month of the year, we have “Remembrance Day”, a day in which there is perhaps a moment of quiet refection where we “Remember”. We try to conjure up an image. We try to come to grips with sacrifice and loss and experiences we can never fully comprehend, endured on our behalf by people we will never truly know.
We like to use the euphemism “They gave their lives”. You will hear that often today, along with “sacrifice”, “lost their lives”, “lost in action” “fallen soldier” and “among the missing”. These are words and phrases, not of actual Remembrance, but are words originally used in a vain attempt to explain the inexplicable. Those who had endured used words far more graphic or simply chose to remain silent. Today these words are almost clichés, bookmarks in our minds for concepts we will never be able to properly understand.
We are removed by time and by distance.
You could walk on the beaches of Normandy this very day and pass the exact spots where men landed, walked a few paces and were obliterated, without ever knowing they had even been there. You could on this day, hike in the forests of the Ardennes in Eastern Belgium with similar result. If you chose to wander in parts of Flanders, you’d possibly find the occasional depression in the ground, for in some areas the remains of WWI trenches and shell craters still exist, but the scene is quiet and completely unassuming.
The closest you might come to the dangers of the WWI battle fields in France, would be if you mistakenly strolled into one of the many “off limits” zones, areas so full of unexploded ordinance, poisonous gas shells, toxic heavy metals and pulverized human remains, that they have been permanently closed. These are war memorials in and of themselves and it has been estimated that 700 years will have to go by before nature can render the 1200 square kilometers of land safe once more.
A walk through the cemetery at Bény-sur-Mer in France might give you but a moment’s pause. It is a silent place, a place of immaculately manicured greenery which contrasts sharply with the columns of brilliant white markers. All is in perfect symmetry. It is one of the nicest green spaces I have ever seen. There are 2,048 Canadians at Bény-sur-Mer, including 19 unknown. They are all soldiers killed during the early stages of the Battle of Normandy. They are the parachutists and glider pilots and glider borne foot soldiers of Operation Tonga. They were the first wave, landing behind the lines in the middle of the night.
We at our far remove of time, distance and safety have no idea what these battles were like. We cannot begin to comprehend the experience and so have no reference point when we use words like “Sacrifice” and phrases such as “Gave their lives”. It is not possible for us to come to an accurate realization of what befell those individuals now buried at Bény-sur-Mer. It is coming rapidly to the point where we begin to fail to see them as individuals at all.
They are all becoming “unknown” because to us, they are unknowable.
And so we stand in quiet confusion on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day in the eleventh month, like the children, grand children and great grand children we are. We are oblivious to the realities of those times, those places and those individual conflicts.
We cannot “Remember” on Remembrance Day. Those privileges and burdens were bestowed a long time ago, on a group of now very old men.
The best that we can do, is be mindful and be grateful.
Thanks Erik. Excellent editorial and photos. We should remember those who sacrificed during the 1st and 2nd World Wars, and apologise on behalf of those who participated in the Boer War genocide.