# We Remember



## sags (May 15, 2010)

Today I think of my grandfather.









He was born in 1899 and when he was 15 years old he went down to the recruiting centre and tried to sign up. His parents were called and went to fetch him home.

He was determined and went back to the recruiting centre. This time his parents decided he was bound and bent to go and let him do so.

His application is notated with............_Under 16 years of age. Do not send overseas until he is 16._

He was signed up and went overseas anyways, as part of the Royal New Brunswick Battalion, which was later merged into the 64th Battalion Canadian Expedition Forces.

From my research, I believe he fought in many battles including Vimy Ridge. I try to imagine a kid......15-19 involved in such a hideous war.

He didn't talk much about his experience, and when I was a young kid and asked him about it his eyes would glisten. He drank a lot at the Legion with other veterans.

He became an alcoholic but lived a long life. I wouldn't say it was a happy life though. He was always serious and seemed to be thinking of faraway places all the time.

When I was a young lad I had a nap in his bedroom and did some snooping. I found a German Luger pistol and came out of the bedroom waving it around.

My grandmother was horrified and grabbed it away from me. She scolded my grandfather for leaving it in the night stand.

He did recount to me some bits and pieces of his life as a soldier......

He was a motorcycle messenger for a bit.........and had to put his chin on the handlebars to avoid the razor wire set up by Germans at neck height. He was also a sniper and said they would always shoot the last soldier in the group as the others would carry on and not go back. He talked of mustard gas and muddy trenches, and he talked of a soldier who wrote poems while in the trenches with him. Would that be Robert Service, I always wondered.

God Bless you Grandpa and all the others who went with you. 

In war, many don't come home and we remember them today, but we also remember those who fight our battles and are forever changed.


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## humble_pie (Jun 7, 2009)

almost every week, during the canadian campaign in afghanistan, i'd open the news media website early in the morning & find another official portrait filling the front page top centre.

always the background - sunlit blue sky - was the same. The army photogs were using a backdrop.

they were barely more than 20 years of age. Some were not even twenty.

no use to talk about their bright, clear-eyed gaze. What broke my heart was their skin. They always had the most beautiful skin. The homely ones with the deep pockmarks from teenage acne & the crooked teeth, those were the most beautiful of all.


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## indexxx (Oct 31, 2011)

One hundred years since the guns fell silent:


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.


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## Eder (Feb 16, 2011)

Our vets have made us proud time and again war after war...thanks Dad.(he was only 17 when he signed up with 2 older brothers...he first saw action during the invasion of Sicily and finished in the liberation of Holland. He had a fist full of medals but never talked about the war)


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## Plugging Along (Jan 3, 2011)

Sags: Thank you for posting this. Its not very often where I hear accounts from a 'real person' about a 'real veteran'. You don't hear much about the impacts afterwards. 

Each year, we buy our poppies, we talk about the war with my girls, in hopes that they will continue to remember. I can tell that it doesn't always resonate with them because it something, thank goodness, they have never had to live through. After reading your post yesterday, I made sure in addition to our moment of silence, we carved a little time again to talk about it.

Thank you.


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## Longtimeago (Aug 8, 2018)

indexxx said:


> One hundred years since the guns fell silent:
> 
> 
> In Flanders fields the poppies blow
> ...


Major John McCrae


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## indexxx (Oct 31, 2011)

Longtimeago said:


> Major John McCrae


I took a tour of Canadian WW1 sites in Belgium back in 2007- very moving. One site was related to McCrae and the poem- I can't remember now if it's where he was supposed to have written it, something like that. I remember being amazed at the "hills' they were dying for- just small rises on Belgian farmland. And at the amount of ordnance that is still being found- it's all over the place.


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## Koogie (Dec 15, 2014)

Longtimeago said:


> Major John McCrae


I think you will find he was a Lt. Col.


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## Mukhang pera (Feb 26, 2016)

Plugging Along said:


> Sags: Thank you for posting this. Its not very often where I hear accounts from a 'real person' about a 'real veteran'. You don't hear much about the impacts afterwards.
> 
> Each year, we buy our poppies, we talk about the war with my girls, in hopes that they will continue to remember. I can tell that it doesn't always resonate with them because it something, thank goodness, they have never had to live through. After reading your post yesterday, I made sure in addition to our moment of silence, we carved a little time again to talk about it.
> 
> Thank you.


Well, here's another 'real person' account. I'll perhaps be vilified (or banned) for posting it, but I don't much care. It's the kind of remembrance people don't much care to hear about, because it's difficult to reconcile with what they are taught to believe. Written by someone I know, living close (well, close by off-the-grid out on remote island standards) and who says little of these things, so I am grateful to him for this unvarnished account:

*Remembrance Day*

I barely acknowledge it. I don’t hate it like I hate some stupid societal rituals but I don’t feel what I should about it. So, it comes. It goes. I should put on a better show than just buying a poppy, I suppose, but my father didn’t have much time for it. I learned from him. And he should know.

Seaforth Highlanders. Italy. WWII.

My father was wounded badly in a historic battle at Ortona. Hit by heavy artillery. Lay hanging in a tree in the battle ground for three days. Carried out on the dead cart. Received a 100% disability pension. They not only didn’t think he’d live, they thought that if he did, he’d be a vegetable. And they were right for about 15 years – like the plant in the Little Shop of Horrors, though. After that, he got a bit of life back but even then, it was corrupted by PTSD writ HUGE. He was pretty wrecked. Crazy dysfunctional. Dangerous dysfunctional. He was literally a ticking time bomb of violence for two decades.

If you get both your legs blown off in battle, you get an 80% disability pension. His was 100%. Think about that.

I have. I always wondered why 99% wasn’t the highest rating of disability and the top number – 100% – wasn’t reserved for dead. But, what do I know about war? I do know this: my father wouldn’t talk about it. Maybe once or twice. He thought it was all madness. Evil madness. Money madness. He didn’t think freedom or liberty or ‘our way of life’ or any of that had anything much to do with it – not up the ladder, anyway. The soldiers were just kids but they were okay. Governments were all complicit in war. They were NOT OKAY. Whatever was true, he never knew it. It was nothing but a big lie. It was about ego, empire, lies, money and more lies. He was not proud for having served his country. He was not a flag waver. He just survived a lie. He was fodder for a corporate agenda. And he knew it….too late.

Did the country stand behind him? Maybe. Some. Not much from my perspective. He got two years in the hospital (much of it in a coma). He got pounds of drugs for years. Literally. A box the size of a loaf of bread would be delivered every month. I once saw him pouring his pills down the toilet. “Dad, shouldn’t you be taking that stuff?”

“The war almost killed me. This stuff will kill me. And they know it. I flush them to stay alive.”

“Couldn’t you just send them back?”

“Then they would stop my pension.”

I guess I remember. I just remember it differently than I am supposed to. I remember the effects on my father, the effects on my mother, the effects on our splintered family. I distinctly remember the hugely dysfunctional community of veterans and their alcoholism, violence, and inability to cope with civilian life. I think a lot of people suffered other than just the soldiers but theirs was the worst. I feel for them. They were lied to. They were used. And then they were ignored.

Until Remembrance Day. And then they are dead.

_OK….I’ve been thinking about that suppressed anger written above. I am NOT as angry over the past diabolical schemes of governments and corporations and their lies so much anymore. It was bad. Our family paid a huge price. I am angry still. But it is over and the past should not own me. The real anger is more fresh and present when I see those who were never there, never suffered, never served, walking somberly and saying platitudes, laying wreaths at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. All those rich men. I get angry when I see Trudeau and Trump ‘posing’ and acting. Those bastards make me remember in all the wrong ways._


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## Longtimeago (Aug 8, 2018)

Koogie said:


> I think you will find he was a Lt. Col.


Oh dear, I made a 'major' mistake. LOL

He supposedly wrote it on May 3rd and was promoted from Major to Lt Col. on April 17 which would apparently make you right in correcting my 'major' mistake. 

But my point was that if someone is going to quote something then it is only polite to attribute it to the person who wrote it.


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## Longtimeago (Aug 8, 2018)

Mukhang pera, I see no reason why anyone should think they would be vilified or banned for giving a differing view of war and it's causes. It is not an uncommon view after all to see nothing worthy in war. 

My Father served in WW2 in the RAF and never talked about his war years. He too sometimes made disparaging comments about Rememberance Day etc. He said there was nothing he wanted to remember, only things he wanted to forget. I remember him once referring to the Legion as 'only a place for cooks and clerks'. While I'm sure that isn't and wasn't 100% true, I think he was probably closer to the truth than some might want us to believe.

If you want to suggest a personal account that takes a different view then read the poem Dulce et Decorum est, written by another veteran of WW1 named Wifred Owen. While, In Flanders Field is revered around the world, it isn't hard to understand why Wilfred Owen's poem does not get the same attention. Dulce et Decorum est translates as 'it is sweet and honourable' and was taken from the Roman poet Horace. In Horace's use of the words, it was followed by, 'pro patria mori' which means, 'to die for one's country.' So the title Wilfred Owen chose was short for 'it is sweet and honourable to die for one's country.' Obviously, when you read the poem you realize he was being ironic. 

However, none of that stops me from being able to remember that whatever the motivation of the 'higher powers', my father did what he did not to please those higher powers but because he believed it was the right thing to do at the time and that is worth my honouring his memory for.

Here is Dulce et Decorum est which paints a very graphic picture of war in the trenches and the 'old lie'. It is interesting to note as well that this poem was standard reading in UK high schools for many years. They at least were being given another view to look at.

Dulce et Decorum Est 
BY WILFRED OWEN

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.


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## m3s (Apr 3, 2010)

Remembrance Day in Canada is becoming somewhat virtue signalling but it is important

It sometimes becomes a marathon of local corporations laying wreaths thanking stolen valour veterans wearing mismatched surplus uniforms looking for free food. The Canadian Legion which sells the poppies seems to have completely disassociated themselves from the actual military and they never really accepted veterans from Afghanistan or other "wars". Most of the current members were never in in the military and seem to hold very different old stock values from modern soldiers and Canadians, such as diversity and inclusion (general impression of my peers) My grandfather never took part in any of it, avoided alcoholism and carried on with a typical Canadian civilian life. You would never know he was a veteran besides the letters, documents and WWII kit that was eventually handed down to me.

I found it very different in Europe though especially the Netherlands, Belgium, France. In some places there are still several ceremonies a day such as Ypres. On Christmas Eve people go to the graves to light candles, no official ceremony or government involved. The school children care for the local graves throughout the year. There are still explosive ordinance being found on a regular basis. There are still remains of soldiers being found and buried in the cemeteries. In 2014 I conducted the military honours for F/Sgt Carey and family and there was one for Sgt Allen Ross just this year. There are official ceremonies throughout the year marking anniversaries of battles. The Netherlands have a day a remembrance for both civilians and military who died, followed by a huge celebration of liberation every May 4-5

Canadians are lucky to be so distanced and sheltered from war today. I think one day a year is appropriate to just reflect and acknowledge that.


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## kcowan (Jul 1, 2010)

Mukhang pera said:


> ...The real anger is more fresh and present when I see those who were never there, never suffered, never served, walking somberly and saying platitudes, laying wreaths at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. All those rich men. I get angry when I see Trudeau and Trump ‘posing’ and acting. Those bastards make me remember in all the wrong ways.[/I]


Amen MP! Maybe Trump was right to let a little rain discourage him since he was a draft dodger with bone spurs. Trudeau is another whole story.


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## humble_pie (Jun 7, 2009)

kcowan said:


> > Originally Posted by *Mukhang pera*
> >
> > The real anger is more fresh and present when I see those who were never there, never suffered, never served, walking somberly and saying platitudes, laying wreaths at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. All those rich men. I get angry when I see Trudeau and Trump ‘posing’ and acting. Those bastards make me remember in all the wrong ways.
> 
> ...



wondering why one would think that it was mukhang pera who wrote that he is the one who gets "angry" when he sees "those bastards" "Trudeau and Trump" "posing and acting"

my take on MP's post is that the above final paragraph in italics - the angry paragraph - was written by the third party whose father was severely wounded in WW II. It does not appear to have been written by MP about himself.

MP quotes a long text from this third party, whom he describes as "someone I know, living close (well, close by off-the-grid out on remote island standards) and who says little of these things, so I am grateful to him for this unvarnished account"

:


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## Mukhang pera (Feb 26, 2016)

You are correct, hp.

The portion in italics was written that way - in italics - by its author. I have added nothing of my own. Neither words nor style.


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## indexxx (Oct 31, 2011)

Longtimeago said:


> Oh dear, I made a 'major' mistake. LOL
> 
> He supposedly wrote it on May 3rd and was promoted from Major to Lt Col. on April 17 which would apparently make you right in correcting my 'major' mistake.
> 
> But my point was that if someone is going to quote something then it is only polite to attribute it to the person who wrote it.


Point taken- forgive my oversight.


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## humble_pie (Jun 7, 2009)

my children's grandfather fought & died in a sister Highland regiment in the same canadian advance up southern italy. He's buried in the Agira canadian military cemetery in sicily.

the 48th highlanders landed in sicily & fought their way north bare hill by bare hill. By that fairly late date in the war, german panzer divisions had joined the slowly losing italians.

the 48th were creeping up a treeless hill, with panzer sharpshooters holding the summit. The canadians were taking cover behind whatever bush or scrub they could find, then crawling forward a few metres whenever an opportunity seemed to open.

at one such lull in the gunfire, the lieutenant from ontario thought he had a chance to move his men forward. He stood up to signal the move & to urge them onwards. In that split second, a panzer sharpshooter killed him.

his very young widow would re-marry years later; but part of her never recovered.


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