Remembering the depth of war experiences

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday November 10th, 2008

Some days I feel like Henny Penny. Writing an article about the state of the world can often seem like running around screaming "the sky is falling" while everyone patiently ignores you. There are times when I write lighter fare just because it always seems that I have a negative slant on society.

In truth I am just caught up in the massive change that continues to surround us. Last week City Views columnist Aloma Jardine wrote about how much Moncton has changed in the last four years that she has lived here. She is absolutely right, but we also have to look at the global scale of change. Part of my doom and gloom attitude comes from the realization that we cannot possibly adapt to change as fast as it is occurring.

I am not going to rehash a list of everything that has or is changing, we all realize it to be true whenever Christmas rolls around and they try to sell us all new everything. We realize it whenever we try to talk to someone who is either a decade older or younger than we are. Massive change causes stress. It also affects things we never even stop to think about.

Remembrance Day is an example.

My grandfather was a Bren machine gunner with the North Shore Regiment and invaded Dieppe, France. Sometime in the first few weeks after that he was shot in the head and left for dead, only to be found and nursed back to health. I am not sure which side found him; he never talked too much about it.

He was a train engineer until that bullet paralyzed the right side of his body. He re-trained, became a teacher, became a principal, and changed lives.

I visited him a year or so before he died and he looked out the window of his apartment and said that it was a day just like this one when the Allied planes accidentally bombed his platoon. That was some 50 years later and the temperature, the quality of sunlight, the wind . . . something reminded him of that moment so clearly that he was lost in memory.

That is Remembrance Day. It is not that we are looking back at glorious victory. It is not even that we are keeping the reality of war alive so that we never go there again.

Remembrance Day is a moment to allow for the reality of lost innocence. It is a time to acknowledge the pain, hardship, loss of life, and continuing haunting nightmares of generations of our best and brightest.

So here is the thing; my grandfather is dead. Almost everyone who fought in the First World War is dead. We can go watch Paschendale and perhaps get some voyeuristic understanding of trench warfare. Most of the people who fought in the Second World War are nearing the end of their lives. Perhaps the movie Saving Private Ryan gives us a taste for the horror of a beachhead invasion or the loss of loved ones and companions.

None of that creates memories.

We are losing our memory of the actual taste, sight, sound, feel, emotion and horror of these events. What will the world be like when that memory is gone?

We have other battles that we have been involved with, or peace keeping missions, even Iraq and Afghanistan. I would argue these do not have the same overall emotional impact in our collective memory as the times when the whole world seemed at war.

There are horrible moments in every conflict for those involved. There are memories that never escape us even if we are only involved in limited military actions for even more limited times.
Remembrance Day is something else though.

It is when each of us who were not there can see in the eyes of those that were there a glimpse of something so horrible that we know we should never again engage in that level of hatred and warfare.

Without seeing my grandfather, without seeing his comrades, without witnessing their struggle and pain, what will it mean?

You see, without the veterans of the great wars that we fought for King and country, we as a people have lost a collective part of ourselves, and we have changed. I am not exactly sure how.
I have a guess that theirs was the last generation that truly believed that the needs of the world, of the country, of their fellow human beings were greater than the needs of the individual. I imagine that we have become too individualistic to fight for something else without a clear sense of how it benefits me.

There are still people who sacrifice for others, there are lots of them. In fact, people serving with the Canadian Forces are disproportionately from the Maritimes, which should make us proud.
We have managed to keep some of the sense of honour and connectedness alive.

Again, I imagine that this is because of those who were our elders and who passed on the depth of their experience. Those strong family and clan ties we all have keep us connected.

These are the same elders, the same veterans that we have almost lost.

In the midst of the change that surrounds us, I hope we do not forget them.