Today is Remembrance Sunday

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

by John McCrae, May 1915

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.

2

I just got back from the ceremony in a small Canadian town. A few thoughts.

  • The inclusion of the girl guides and sparks added a beautiful element of whimsy to the parade, especially since 1/3 of them were wearing animal-head hats.

  • My son was marching with the cadets. He doesn’t yet have his uniform, so they told him to dress ‘casually’. Fortunately we had time to make him change clothes, otherwise he’d have looked like the other cadets had brought along a disheveled POW.

  • Very traditional overall, all prayers were to a clearly Christian deity, with no attempt at multiculturalism, and “God save the Queen” at the end, which I’ve never heard said before in Canada.

  • Yet, when the wreaths were being brought up, they played the ‘Skye Boat Song’ (Over the sea to Skye) on the the glockenspiel. This is a song about taking Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Catholic Jacobite pretender to the throne, to safety after the Battle of Culloden. Seems very odd to me, like playing Dixie in Minnesota on Veteran’s Day.

  • Overall, it was lovely, and moving.

3

Here in the US we call it Veteran’s Day, but the name is the only thing different. There are ceremonies, prayers, and since it’s Sunday this year I’m sure there will be special remembrances in church too.

I always think of “For the Fallen” by Robert Binyon. The link has the poem, and the highlighted verse is perhaps the most remembered. Although the opening verse speaks of England, it could be any country, any war.

4

Each year, the Canadian cartoonist Lynn Johnson did a Remembrance Day strip. Here’s a link to some of them:

http://catalog.fborfw.com/indexholidays.php?q=remembrance

Johnson let her characters age. Seeing Grandad Jim’s gradual decline and his grand-kids grow up is part of the charm and sadness of this collection.

5

The link didn’t come through.

Ninjaed!

6

worked fine for me. always liked her stuff.

7

“We remember how easy it is to begin a war but not to end it. There is no such thing as a short war – the effects of violence remain long after the last shot is fired.” - Elizabeth May

8

Noticed I’d forgotten it after I hit send"!

9

Baker, thanks for the link to the Binyon poem - didn’t know that the “They shall not grow old” was part of a longer poem.