All over the world its known as Armistice Day, or Remembrance day, it was the day that was to bring an end to the war known as "the war to end all wars." The eleventh hour of the eleventh day on the eleventh month.
My grandfather fought in that war, he was with the North Irish Horse regiment in 1914 and then receieved a commission and served with the Royal Warwickshire Regiment for the remainder of the war. He was one of the fortunate who survived, but because of the horrors he experienced would never tell his story. His brother-in-law, too survived the war and did tell his story, but not until late in life when he shared that when the whistle blew for them to get out of the trenches and charge the enemy lines one young (maybe 18) year old got scared and froze. My grandfathers brother-in-law was a member of the firing squad that shot him for cowardice. I guess if you won't charge the enemy then you have to be the enemy. What a needless waste of life!
Of course "the war to end all wars" didn't! It simply marked the beginning of modern warfare. Many have killed and been killed in the pursuit of their vision of freedom and we are indeed reminded of this on Remembrance Day.
English Poet Laurence Binyon wrote...
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
But freedom that is bought and defended at the cost of human lives is hardly one that jives with the gospel. It is (or should be) an uneasy alliance that exists between church and state. For the church tells us to love our enemies, it tells us to pray for those who persecute us, it tells us to feed our enemy when they are hungry or provide them a drink when they are thirsty.
I love the freedom I have and I recognize that many have died in trying to keep it that way. I do wonder though if there isn't a better way and if the freedoms I enjoy are worth the price that has been paid?
While we honor those who fought for freedom, let us never honor war and let us not get the two mixed up. War is a horrible thing, it represents the worst of humanity.
As Wilfred Owen wrote of his WW1 experience...
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.
I don't suppose to many kids today are memorizing this poem in school the way I did in Northern Ireland. Perhaps they should.
