| I missed the ’14-’18 war, but not the sorrow afterwards…. – The Clash, "Something About England"
And the old men march slowly, all bent, stiff and sore
The forgotten heroes from a forgotten war
And the young people ask, "What are they marching for?"
And I ask myself the same question. – Eric Bogle, "The Band Played Waltzing Matilda"
On November 11 we’ll be asked, once more, to remember those who fought and, in some cases, died for Canada in the 20th century. The call for remembrance itself goes back to the days of the First World War, beginning with John MacRae’s haunting challenge. "If ye break faith with us who die," he wrote from the trenches in 1915, "We shall not sleep, though poppies grow in Flanders field."
And as usual we’ll pause, briefly perhaps, to reflect on the meaning of that global slaughter and the following wars that, in hindsight, marked the passage of the last century. Yet just what is it that we choose to remember? For those who weren’t there, who weren’t actors in the carnage that took place, is remembrance even possible in any meaningful sense? And just what, in real terms, do these annual token gestures amount to?
The First World War was the first major conflict among the newly industrialized nations of Europe, and as such it unleashed the unprecedented (and seemingly unlimited) destructive capacity of modern economies. The two opposing sides – the Allied Powers (Britain, France, Russia, etc.) and the Central Powers (Germany and Austria-Hungary) – between them spent more than $190 billion (US) over the four years of war, and sent into battle as many as 70 million soldiers. The total death toll has never been definitively established, but lies in the region of eight to 10 million. To that figure, however, must be added the 21 million wounded and another seven or eight million who were taken prisoner or simply can’t be accounted for. Add them all up, and casualties of that war account for roughly 60 per cent of all its mobilized troops. Actually, it’s a lot more than that: this figure doesn’t take into consideration those who survived, physically, but suffered the psychological and emotionally ruinous effects of so-called "shell shock."
Such big numbers mean little, of course. "A single death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic," Josef Stalin once remarked. To put things in perspective, the number of American soldiers killed since the war on Iraq began in March 2003 is now roughly 1,100. On average, Britain lost 460 soldiers each and every day during the First World War; for France, it was 900; for Germany, a staggering 1,300, or one soldier for every minute of the war.
To remember the dead, the wounded or the missing of that war as individuals, then, is simply impossible. Instead, we recall them in abstract phrases, such as "the fallen," and acknowledge, in a general sense, "the sacrifice" they made, much in the spirit of MacRae’s poem. However, in accepting such euphemisms – they did not "fall," they were gunned down, shrieking in agony as they died – we do not really remember the war at all. Rather, we cling to a sanitized, mythologized vision of what the war (that war, any war) was really like. Thus as we remember and honour the veterans this November 11, it is not them as individuals that we see but a set of imposed beliefs and delusions.
Part of remembering is forgetting. By definition, that which we remember is determined by what we forget. What have we chosen to forget about the First World War? Another soldier-poet, Wilfred Owen, wrote in 1915 of the fate that awaited a young victim of war, his legs torn from his body by a shell:
Now, he will spend a few sick years in institutes,
And do what things the rules consider wise,
And take whatever pity they may dole.
Tonight he noticed how the women’s eyes
Passed from him to the strong men that were whole.
How cold and late it is! Why don’t they come…?
Owen was right. Even before the war was over, the federal government began fighting a shameful battle with veterans to deny them proper pensions, postwar medical treatment and other help. And this gap – between the rhetoric and reality of remembrance – became a constant feature of all Canadian governments in the 20th century.
Yet even if we are willing to genuinely remember and honour those who fought in war on our behalf, difficulties remain. In 14-18: Understanding the Great War, Stéphane Adoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker calculate the scale of bereavement experienced by each of the belligerent nations after the war. Adding up all the immediate and distant family members of each dead soldier, the authors conclude that "virtually an entire society was probably in mourning; an entire society formed a community of mourning."
How are we, 90 years on from the outbreak of the First World War and inoculated against the true horror of contemporary war thanks to the self-censoring nature of most media coverage, to understand such a phenomenon? When grief is universal, who offers comfort or consolation? Charles Yale Harrison, who fought for Canada in the war, expressed this dilemma in Generals Die in Bed, a graphic and bitter account of his experiences that he finally managed to get published in 1928. On meeting a new group of recruits about to be sent to the Front, he asked: "Who can comfort whom in war? Who can care for us, we who are set loose at each other and tear at each other’s entrails with silent gleaming bayonets? I want to tell these boys what I think, but the gulf of language separates us."
It still does. Two years ago, The Globe and Mail sought out surviving Canadian veterans of the First World War and managed to locate 16. The youngest was then aged 102. To carry memories of the horrors of that war for a lifetime is something I cannot begin to imagine, but would not wish on anyone.
If they who served choose to remember, I can and must respect that. But does anyone ever ask them if that’s what they want? |
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