Why just one day?

We Shall Keep the Faith

Oh! you who sleep in Flanders Fields,
Sleep sweet - to rise anew! We caught the torch you threw
And holding high, we keep the Faith
With All who died. We cherish, too, the poppy red
That grows on fields where valor led;
It seems to signal to the skies
That blood of heroes never dies,
But lends a lustre to the red
Of the flower that blooms above the dead
In Flanders Fields. And now the Torch and Poppy Red
We wear in honor of our dead.
Fear not that ye have died for naught;
We'll teach the lesson that ye wrought
In Flanders Fields.

Moina Michael

If you don't stand behind our troops...stand in front of them.
--bumper sticker making the rounds of late

I've written a couple of entries on prior Remembrance Days and don't really know what else need be said. All we owe those who have served is everything. Those who continue to serve our country in far-flung places do so out of duty, pride, commitment and purpose, and we who live safe and carefree, subsisting on Hollywood pap and ignorant of the harsher realities would do well to keep that in mind.

But not just for one day.

Wearing a poppy is a start, I suppose. Though I wonder how many poppies are there more as fashion accessories than anything else. But how many will dispose of their poppies tomorrow and spare them and the sacrifice they represent nary a thought until sometime around next Hallowe'en?

I've written before that Remembrance Day is the secular Easter. It's an analogy I rather like. Our soldiers fought and in too many cases died that we might live in freedom. It really is no accident that John McCrae wrote

If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Just like I wonder about the motivations of each poppy-wearer I see, I often find myself considering the nature of that faith, and how best to keep it. To me, wearing a poppy is its merest token, the equivalent of a Christmas-and-Easter Christian proclaiming his piety to all and sundry. I believe that many, if not most, Canadians long ago "broke faith" with those who died; that far too few have any faith in those who live and serve today.

It is still too often assumed that the first article of that faith is the glorification of war. Nothing could be further from the truth. Nobody who has ever lived through war's least skirmish would think to glorify it; we have volumes of war poetry to dispel any notion of war's glory.

Yet war is occasionally required to obtain a just peace. There are many who would look at that statement and dismiss it out of hand, equating it with such statements as "it became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it". But I stand by the dichotomy: war is abhorrent...and sometimes imperative.

War is collective definition at its most elemental: for this we will not stand. We who love peace, who love life, choose to kill and die in defense of peace and life.

People's definitions of a "just war" differ, and therein lies the chasm between dove and hawk. Today is not the day to delve into the politics of any given conflict. I suspect most veterans would agree with me that a peaceful solution is always preferable...but not always possible. It takes a special breed of person to step into the breech when the preferable option isn't there.

I would suggest that honouring that special breed of person goes well beyond one poppy, one ceremony, one day of the year. I despair at what we have done with the freedom so many have earned for us. Those politicians who play petty games for power; those voters who notice little and care less; those celebrities whose only concerns are their fame and their bank accounts; all these and many more besides have broken faith, each in their own way. All those living life unconsciously, sleepwalking through existence, might wish to spare a thought for those who came before, who consciously chose peril, and perished.

In short, we honour those who gave, and continue to give, their lives and livelihoods best through our lives and livelihoods.

Lest we forget.