Source: the Canadian encyclopedia via Joseph Moore

On the 11th hour, of the 11th day, of the 11th month, the guns of wrath finally fell silent. The war that had consumed everything that was thrown into it was extinguished. The death toll was not something which could be comprehended then, and scarcely now. The first day of the Battle of the Somme, the deadliest in the history of the British Army, cost the British 57,470 casualties, with 19,240 dead. That was in less than 24 hours on the Western Front. For context, for the war in Afghanistan, the total Coalition dead was 3,579 dead over the course of about 20 years. The carnage of the Great War has echoed out from that point in a way that every subsequent war has not in my mind.

I’ve had a fascination and interest in the Great War which has never really waned over my life, but it has certainly acquired more texture. The First World War has loomed larger and larger for me over time. I feel more keenly the tragedy of it, both in terms of the dead and in how it changed our world profoundly. To feed my interest, I recently read Martin Gilbert’s magisterial work The First World War: A Complete History after having dipped into the war in the Middle East by reading on the fall of the Ottoman Empire, I felt it was a good pivot to go back into the Western Front since I’d been recently to the east. I’m glad I was able to finish the book before this coming Armistice Day. Gilbert brilliantly details both the grand narratives of the war at large and the individual tragedies of it. What struck me the most in that book were those individual vignettes.

Those personal stories were as varied as they were impactful, but all of them were connected by the monumental event which was the Great War. The letters of soldiers you read over the whole of the book, only to learn near the end that he died in 1918, after having survived the worst of the war, even signing up for another go. Or the woman who wrote in her diary of how much she missed her fiancé and was looking forward to dressing herself up so she could look her best for him at the train station when he returned, and musing that his leave was long enough for them to get married, only to have that shattered when we learn that he died the day before he was to arrive. Individual lives destroyed, so many of them that it becomes numbing, but the moment you zoom in you feel the pain again, like how you can lay on a bed of nails, but pushing your hand on one is painful. I had to stop going through the book more than once to collect myself after reading one of these tales, so powerful was the force of them. It gave so much more gravity to the moves described by the politicians and generals when you hear how it impacted each life individually.

I had a small part to play in some of these stories myself during my bachelor’s degree. I took part in a project at the Brantford Museum to help remember some of these men and their stories. I and a group of other history students made a display honoring the men who made the last measure of devotion to King and Country. Another on the project gave it the name Brantford Answers the Call, playing on the city’s nickname of The Telephone City. We got to see the personal items of these men. We saw the diaries, the uniforms, the helmets, even a captured set of plans for a German aircraft, it all brought it to life in an intimate way. I felt the weight of memory on me during that project, and I’ve never forgotten it since, though it was far from the first time I was deeply affected by the call of memory.

Remembrance Day has always had an effect on me. For all my secularity growing up, Remembrance Day was different. It was the closest to a holy day that was permitted in my secular worldview. The rituals and liturgy of it were set and no one dared change them, and it had a serious effect on me. The poppies on everyone’s breast, the moment of silence at the 11th hour, the earnest calls to remember, the austere but imposing monuments to the fallen, and the reciting of the poem In Flanders Fields.

Out of all the rituals involved in Remembrance Day In Flanders Fields has always struck me the hardest. The words are simple, but stirring, and it never fails to bring me to tears since the very first time I heard it as a child. Interestingly, it wasn’t a well-regarded poem by poets at the time of its publication, nor by many afterwards. Thankfully, those opinions were disregarded by the majority, and it has become synonymous with remembrance and the need to venerate the fallen.

The words are haunting and earnest, bringing home the need to not forget the men who gave their lives for their country. It captures the experience of the Western Front in a few lines of text, while also enjoining us with the responsibility of the great chain of being. Because nowhere else are the links of that binding more tangible than when reciting the last lines of that poem while standing at the cenotaph. In those lines the fallen call out to us and remind us of the linkage that we neglect to our shame and ruin.

Chesterton calls tradition the democracy of the dead, that it is the vote of those past which we should respect, and woe to those who believe it matters not. It’s why veterans were particularly against the new Canadian flag when it was introduced by Lester B. Pearson, they had bled under the Red Ensign, their friends and family had died under it. It felt like an insult to their suffering. The traditions of remembrance build memory and transmit it across time, engendering to those long removed from the events of the weight of them.

For years, Remembrance Day was the only ritual I observed with reverence. I would carefully ensure that I stood at attention and silence at the 11th hour, even if it was by myself in a closed room where no one could see. Even though I largely rejected spirits, I could somehow not stomach the thought of the souls of the dead knowing that I had broken faith with them and not honoured their sacrifice, despite apparently not believing in them at all, something which I struggle to explain even now. CS Lewis observed something similar, in that he knew many atheists who insisted they had seen a ghost, so at least I was not alone in this contradiction.

Parting Thoughts

For me, the day has only grown in importance since my conversion to Catholicism. For those unaware, Catholics pray for the dead so that they may be saved by God’s grace or so that those who are saved but whose souls still have attachment to sin may move more swiftly through purgatory, it’s considered a spiritual work of mercy, one I try to diligently perform. Where before I maintained a vigil for the sole reason of memory and honour, now I have added prayer for their souls, and the difference is noticeable for me. I can connect with them in a tangible way, I can try in the smallest way to repay what they bequeathed to me. The Church Militant acting on behalf of the Church Penitent is the way I see it now, which creates a concrete linkage between the living and dead, which is one of the meanings of the communion of the saints.

Make no mistake about my focus on the dead of the Great War in this piece, it doesn't mean I feel other conflicts weren’t important and that their dead are less worthy of attention, far from it. The reason I have such a focus on it is that I feel a connection that I cannot shake, nor do I want to. Having a connection to one thing does not deny the importance of others. While I usually feel no need to make this explicit, in this case I do, since I hold the memory of all the fallen and the experiences of the living veterans in such high regard that I wish no one to take the wrong message.

I’d like to leave you all with my favorite rendition of In Flanders Fields and the plain text of John McCrae’s poem. I encourage you listen, read, reflect, honour and pray for those we Remember on the 11th hour, of the 11th day, of the 11th month. Because woe to us if we should break faith with those who died.

In Flanders Fields

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.