This is a significant time of year. We gather our harvest from the fields and we give thanks for our abundant, bountiful crop. We celebrate this harvest in our places of worship, to a higher source; for me that is our Lord God and the harvests are gifts from God. I respect that for you it may be something that differs with my input here. This has to, and must be, respected too.
And now it is time to recognise Armistice Day, or Remembrance Day; an occasion on 11th November that crosses all cultural and religious boundaries entirely. It is, in and of itself, an act of respect and solemn reflection that is focused on all those who have ‘served’ and, in particular, those that paid the ‘ultimate sacrifice’ with their life; and again, to me, life is God’s most precious of all gifts.
Before I go any further I need to rant. Yesterday, Saturday 8th November, a bus drove by. It was advertising it’s number; it was the number 14 bus. It also advertised it destination; it was Sherwood Village. But then it also advertised the following message ~ ~ ~
‘Merry Christmas’.
Merry Christmas? It is 8th November and my local bus company is advertising yuletide messages! This does not seem right to me. Also, on the same day, the neighbouring town of London, Ontario had their annual Santa Claus Parade. Also not quite right to me. Why are we teaching our children to focus on Christmas and Santa and presents, etc. when all of the poppies have not yet been sold? Can we not, as a society, wait until we have acknowledged the men and women who have served their countries by stopping, in a moment of silence, to remember those that have fallen whilst carrying out their duties? They fought and died so that we that are left can enjoy freedom and all the privileges that freedom brings. For the love of God we must stop the incessant greed that has filtered into our societal way of thinking and put things back in to perspective. Christmas is a great celebration, but it can wait until after Remembrance. Rant over; on with my blog…
I served; twelve years with the Royal Air Force, or RAF as we call it (pronounced ‘raff’). I served without realising at the time, what an honour and a privilege it was. My service saw some testing times of their own. But they were never traumatic times; here’s a few that I remember as I write.
In the 1970s there was the firefighters’ strike in England. I wonder how many folks, reading this blog from England, can recall the military stepping in to cover for the striking firefighters. And if so; would they remember the ‘Green Goddess’? This was an affectionate term for the Bedford RLHZ Self Propelled Pump fire-engine that served in the British Armed Forces. In England we called them fire engines, not fire trucks.
Also in the 1970s we had the IRA bombings in London, which made travelling a dodgy task for all servicemen and women in England. A lot of the bombings focused on the London transportation infrastructure. We were a prime target for the IRA; cautious times indeed.
There were more troubled times in the late 1970s when I was posted to RAF Brüggen in, what was, West Germany. You would have thought that during those Cold War times, when based in Europe, that the threat would be coming from the ‘east’ but it wasn’t. It was coming from right there in West Germany; they were called the ‘Baader-Meinhof Group’ and they were a West German militant group with severe leanings towards the far-left. Ironically, as time went on, they became known as the Red Army Faction; yup, when abbreviated they were known as the RAF; but they weren’t the good guys. Fortunately, they were dissolved in the late 1990s.
I also found myself at RAF Gibraltar during the Falklands conflict. ‘Gib’ was a major staging post during that war. I had been there in 1977, on a detachment with my RAF base, but it was nowhere near as busy then as it was in 1982 during the Falklands war. I was only there for a few days in 1982; not on active service, but to see my sweetheart of that day. She had been sent out to ‘Gib’ at short notice and we didn’t know when she would be back. The place was a hive of activity with troops being shipped, round the clock, further south to the war itself.
So at this time of year, after we have celebrated the harvest gathering, and the kids are done with their ‘trick-or-treating’, my attention always turns to the act of remembrance. I refuse, adamantly, to even contemplate Christmas until after Remembrance Day.
During my twelve year service career with the RAF, I expended enormous amounts of energy in the ongoing pursuit of military parade avoidance. I would do everything in my power to ensure that I would not get selected for any form of military parades. Ironically, my son is now serving in the Royal Canadian Air Force, or RCAF and Martin actually enjoys participating in military parades and derives great joy from doing so. He makes me proud. I, however, didn’t see the light until after I had left the RAF and, with my lovely bride, Jane, moved to a new life in Canada. It was only after I had stopped serving my country that I realised what an honour it had been to serve my country; and I have since not forgotten that. I have attended every possible Remembrance parade at the war memorial for the town I am in on every 11th November since 1988; the year I left the RAF and we moved to Canada.
When my three children were younger, I always made sure that they grew up understanding the importance of this day in the year. I recall Remembrance Day 2000 with great affection; it was a Saturday. Martin had just turned 11, my girls, Zoe and Alex, were only 6 and 5 respectively. I took all three of my young children to the parade. Because this was the first Remembrance of the New Millennium, making it a significant event, the 26th Lieutenant Governor of Ontario chose a small town in Ontario in which to observe this Remembrance Day. And so it was that Sarnia was privileged to have the Honourable Hilary M. Weston CM, OOnt in attendance for this millennial event. She happened to notice, after the formal proceedings had come to an end, that there was a young(ish) man in attendance with his three children; that was me. The Lieutenant Governor took the time to walk over to us, shake hands with me and my three children, and thanked us for coming out to observe such an important event on that sunny, but crisply chilly morning. After a brief conversation she left us to talk with others; a moment in time that I’ll always remember.
Although I served, it is clearly evident that I never suffered. At times, though, I have found myself wondering, for those that did suffer, what it must have been like. Out there on the battlefield; whether that field is the seas or the skies or the fields themselves. Every soldier of every nation was a child of someone. As Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, of the Canadian Army Medical Corp, says so eloquently in his poem from the Great War, Flanders Fields - - -
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!
“Loved and were loved” are such powerful words. Everyone in all of those fields of conflict came in to this world by way of ‘love and peace’. And how tragically brutal their exit may have been. So yes, at times, I wonder what it must have been like. What I am certain of is that it is beyond my comprehension. It is my hope that every fallen soldier of every nation, whilst lying wounded with mayhem and violence all around, was able to feel that ‘love and peace’ once more before darkness and silence enveloped their very senses.
It is for that reason that I show up for the Remembrance Parade Service on 11th November every year; to honour their lives with solemn remembrance.
And Remembrance Day should always be remembered.
