Remembrance Day 2021

Some call it by its old name: Armistice Day. Others call it Remembrance Day. Still others know it only as November 11th. No matter what you call it, November 11th is, or should be more than just a date. It's a day to remember those who gave their lives for our countries in a number of wars.

The exact number of wars is debatable. Depends which country you're talking about, and who's counting. But they were all "good wars"... "just wars"... right? They all needed to be fought, right? To preserve freedom and democracy and equality and all those other Good Things. Right? Maybe it's all debatable.

The "Armistice" in Armistice Day refers to the truce proclaimed on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 -- the armistice that ended the Great War, the war that would end all wars. But, as the ballad "The Green Fields of France" says, it all happened again... And again... And again.

 

This song, sung here by Niall Hanna and Niamh Farrell, is also known as "The Ballad of William McBride". It should be heard every year at this time... in remembrance not just of the wars of the 20th and 21st centuries, but of those that preceded them. 

Following the battle of Antietam, General Robert E. Lee said to General James Longstreet, "It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it." That's something that we seemed to forget, too easily and too often.

We seem to scarcely finish one war before starting another. Sometimes we don't even wait for the first war to end, so we can fight two or three or four wars all at the same time. All for freedom, democracy, equality, human rights, and generally to make the world a better place. For "our side", at least.

Not all of the thousands upon thousands who died fighting our "good wars" did so for the sake of freedom and all that. Some of them did, sure, but some of them died because they obeyed orders and went unflinchingly to the death to which they were sent. It is those men and women -- the ones who didn't want to be there and shouldn't have been there in the first place -- whom Walt wishes to remember today.

Footnote: Joe Warmington, writing yesterday in the Toronto Sun, reports that very few people in the Little Apple are wearing poppies. That's what Don Cherry said two years ago, in what was to be his final appearance on the Coach's Corner segment on Hockey Night in Canada. He called out "those people" who come to our countries to enjoy our "milk and honey" but don't honour those who fought and died to keep us free. For that, he got fired.

Recommended reading for Canadians: Operation Jubilee: Dieppe, 1942: The Folly and the Sacrifice, by Patrick Bishop, published just last month by Viking. Walt gives it ***** (five stars). In spite of the debacle of Dieppe, Canadian governments of both stripes keep looking for foreign wars, like the Muslim civil war in the Middle East, to which Canadians may be sent to die... for what!