Lest We Forget is a phrase embedded into English speaking society.
Yet its literal meaning is based on the assumption that there exists a memory of personal involvement or knowledge acquired through experience or education.
First used in the 1897 Rudyard Kipling poem Recessional, the phrase came to be linked with Remembrance Day after the end of the First World War. The plea serves as a reminder to all nations not to forget past sacrifices, particularly in reference to soldiers and war.
However, for any particular person, what they remember is determined by their personal experience, knowledge and perception of the Great War. Additionally, Canadian memory and re-memory of “the war to end all wars” has been moulded by the contemporary social assertions of each generation since the Armistice.
When men signed up in 1914 to go to war, their attestation papers gave no limitation on their time of service. Their declaration stated “… to serve … the term of one year, or during the war now existing between Great Britain and Germany should the war last longer than one year, and for six months after the termination of that war…”
Because of the enormous distance, any leave the soldiers received was never long enough to cross the Atlantic to visit home.
BOB STUBBINGS,
Fergus Legion
Branch 275
Most did not came back until the end of the war, or not at all. For their families back home, the anxiety of not knowing the fate of their loved ones would only be eclipsed by the battle casualties printed in the community press or the Post Office Telegram notification of death.
Solace was found in the millions of letters written, often daily, by soldiers. Their personal understanding of the war was supplemented with printed stories and notices in the local papers. The social consequences of the war were many, including women joining the workforce en masse, rationing of goods, conscription and women gaining the vote. All impacted societal opinion and the country’s emotional state.
Over the four years of the war, sentiment roller-coastered from patriotism and pride, through grief and suffering, to fathomless pain and numbness. This can best be seen in the transformation of the themes explored by the writers of the day as sentiment moved from jingoism through morality, protest and mourning. There was no possibility the population could ever forget what the war meant to them, even though they may have yearned to do so.
Immediately after the war ended, thousands of people, but few Canadians, traveled to France and Flanders to visit the battlefields and the grave sites and memorials of their loved ones.
This was because the decision had been made that the war dead could not be repatriated home. Closure could only be obtained by seeing the graves of their soldiers or, if they were among the missing, their names on a monument or plaque.
In order to prevent the memory of the fallen from being lost, local war memorials, often cenotaphs, were erected in communities across Canada. Even though time passed, the desire of veterans to remember and honour their comrades and of families seeking closure persisted.
At the 1928 national convention, Canadian Legion delegates passed a resolution for a pilgrimage to the Western Front in coordination with the dedication of the Vimy Memorial. Some 7,500 veterans and their families were in attendance on July 26, 1936 to witness King Edward VIII unveil Walter Allward’s memorial to the fallen.
The debate, or more specifically the sentiment on the war, ebbed and flowed with the social commentary of the time. In the decades immediately after the guns went silent, Canadians sought to make sense of what they had just experienced by focusing on the patriotic and moral significance of the bloodshed. The flower of their country had fallen in defense of liberty and justice. Honouring and remembering the selfless sacrifice that had been given for victory left no room for any examination of the war. Veterans themselves led the honouring of the war dead through the adoption of the red poppy in 1922, which had been immortalized in John McCrae’s celebrated poem.
Notably, the martial theme of In Flanders Fields underwent a societal transformation to one of remembrance. Canadians were proud of their accomplishments and their contribution to humanity.
As the next decade emerged, so to did the writings of war veterans, based on their own war experiences, who were unable to rationalize the “just war.”
Will R. Bird’s memoir And We Go On and Charles Yale Harrison’s Generals Die in Bed were Canadian antiwar novels depicting the absurdity and insanity of war. Yet the undertow of these works invariably revealed empathy and compassion for the plight of the Canadian Tommies.
A lobby for peace promoting universal disarmament gained supporters, but was extinguished by the Depression and the coming of war in 1939.
In contrast to the previous war, Canadians did not go into this conflict with the hysteria seen in 1914. It was seen as a job that had to be done and both men and women joined up to get it done. This war’s trauma was most felt by those parents who had survived the Great War only to see their children lost before their time. Canadians were again reminded of what not to forget.
The post war “boom,” both baby and economic, drove society as Canadians simply wanted to get on with their lives. It was not until the 1960s that conscious thought returned with the Vietnam conflict serving as the spark for anti-military and anti-authoritarian cynicism. While not directly our war, thousands of Canadians enlisted in the U.S. forces. Quite shockingly, soldiers were seen not as the pawns but as the purveyors of war. Veterans were vilified.
Regrettably, society’s wrath had been misplaced. In truth, the soldiers were as much victims of the war as the refugees themselves. Following the Cold War, our country’s self-image as peacekeepers sat well with Canadians. Involvement through the auspices of the United Nations was justified and even instilled a sense of national pride.
The closing decades of the last century saw a cultural return to the horror and futility of war through the works of Canadian novelists like Timothy Findley’s The Wars and David Macfarlane’s The Danger Tree. Poignantly, the war serves only as the backdrop upon which the human tragedy is unveiled in Joseph Boyden’s Three Day Road.
The new century has already begun to leave its mark upon our concept of war. Sept. 11, 2001 and the ensuing war on terrorism, with our costly involvement in Afghanistan, quickly refocused Canadians’ awareness of war.
The individual soldiers who were sent to fight and die captured our nation’s attention. In our need to give recognition for their sacrifice, the Highway of Heroes was started spontaneously by people watching the first fallen soldiers coming home from Afghanistan.
The refurbishment of the Vimy memorial in 2007 metaphorically denotes the resurgence in discussion of the Great War by historians and lay enthusiasts. Operational history is being updated as official archives are reexamined. However, social and cultural history is the new emphasis.
Historians speak from the perspective of the common soldier and give voice to their burden. Tim Cook’s The Secret History of Soldiers reveals the soldiers’ colourful culture. Through Reluctant Warriors, Patrick Dennis vindicates the contribution of the maligned conscripts.
An emphasis on the individual is the current focus of our society’s war interests. Very nearly every Legion Comrade carries the story of a past relative. Those who have researched, can recite their ancestor’s actions and activities with much more awareness than they have of battle formations.
Why has this renewed interest occurred? A sudden, tragic death in a community causes all to pause and express sorrow. Although distressful, they are easier to comprehend than the appalling disasters of the Great War. The waste of human life in this war was on a scale far beyond human comprehension past or present.
We are ill equipped to think of fatalities in such numbers. Call to mind your favourite town in rural Ontario. Now try to picture the annihilation of every person in that town. That was the toll at the Battle of Passchendaele. On the first day of The Somme the Royal Newfoundland Regiment’s attack near Beaumont-Hamel had failed and the men wiped out in less time than it takes to drink a cup of coffee.
Upon the Seget limestone walls of the Vimy Memorial are inscribed the names of 11,285 fallen Canadians with no known grave. From a distance the lettering is a blur, but as you approach, the names become legible. Suddenly the enormity of the loss is impressed upon you. Standing next to the wall your eyes focus on the individual names. They become people – someone’s husband, son or father. It is less disturbing to recall the nameless statistics of war than the faces of human suffering. But we must, because this is the true remembrance for which we strive.
In times of peace, many admirable human qualities are engulfed by our daily hustle and bustle. They do, however, come to the surface during a crisis.
These commendable attributes are quickly recognized and acknowledged by all who witness and benefit. Acts of bravery, compassion and self-sacrifice become the substance for writers, lyricists and poets.
Yet Canadians do not embrace and celebrate their national war heritage near to the extent of our southern neighbours. Nonetheless, it is the soldiers’ history that tells the story of Canada. The Great War has been called Canada’s war of independence – a milestone in our country’s coming-of-age.
The Vimy battle has been referred to as an iconic, nation-changing event. “Birth of the nation” has been coined in reference to the central role the Great War played in our national identity. Yet the memorial is not about military victory and conquest. It exudes the concepts of valour, sacrifice, loss and grief. The central figure, Canada Bereft, mourns her dead who will not be forgotten. It is a solemn place, a place of reflection. It is Canadian.
As we have traced, our memory and re-memory of war have been molded by the social perception of each generation since the Armistice.
So what is it that Canadians are not to forget? For first and second generation Canadians after the two World Wars, it is to remember our veterans and their families, not as nameless masses, but as individuals with lives and dreams which were cut short by these global tragedies. These memories are often engendered by an artifact, a photograph or family heirloom which serve as a direct link to our ancestors.
The personal connection and profound reverence they have is the basis for their willingness to remember.
But what of Canadians new to this nation either by immigration or birth? They do not have an obvious lineage to our war veterans. Contemporary impression of the World Wars for their own sake is at best a “who cares” response and at worst evokes the detestation of the citizenry.
In The Life of Reason, George Santayana wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” But it is so much more than this alone. The hardships of the Great War were felt by everyone, but most directly by the soldiers in the trenches. The reasons they suffered the squalor and horror of The Western Front are many, but they endured primarily because of their unwritten code to not let down their platoon brothers.
To be sure, this sentiment is the thrust of In Flanders Fields: “To you from failing hands we throw the torch; be yours to hold it high.”
To be Canadian is to know our nation’s heritage. To know our heritage is to know the veterans who paved the way to the global recognition we benefit from today. To not let down your ancestral platoon brothers is your duty as a Canadian.
Lest You Forget.
Submitted by Bob Stubbings,
Fergus Legion Branch 275