Remembrance ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #161

Across Canada, at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day in the eleventh month, we remember the fallen of World War I, along with the fallen of all wars, in a national moment of silence. We wear poppies, a gesture suggested by the poem, In Flanders Fields.

It’s a beautiful, heart-wrenching poem, and I well understand why it has come to symbolize our remembrance, but I’ve long been ambivalent about its final stanza, which calls for those living to pick up the torch of war and carry on. I understand why that’s there, too. Why it was important, at the time. That time, seems to me, long past.

I find it disturbing that in the week or two leading up to Remembrance Day here, you’ll see youthful cadets in their middle teens, in full military ceremonial dress, standing at the entrance ways of grocery stores and big box outlets. They’er selling the little red plastic poppy pins many of us wear on the lapels of our coats… as if they are already accepting the torch. Too young to die for their country, but already preparing for the day they will be called upon to serve, and possibly die.

Not yet leaves. Barely a bud on a twig. Already preparing for autumn.

Some Canadians have taken to wearing white poppies, instead of the red, not to dishonour the dead, but to honour them with the hope that their sacrifice in “The War to End all Wars” may someday fulfil that promise. Then, the torch may be laid to final rest at the base of some cenotaph to be marked,

In Remembrance Of All Who Died
In Needless War
Until This Day From Which Hence
We Warred No More.