Most of us are familiar with the now famous names of countries and campaigns in which our Canadians fought and died.
In our history books, we read of Vimy and Passchendaele, Beaumont-Hamel and the Somme. From our fathers and grandfathers we have heard about the disasters of Hong Kong and Dieppe, the victories in Italy, France, and Belgium, and the liberation of the Netherlands.
And the images of the Korean war would be among the first to flicker across our television screens.
What we can never really understand is the terrible, terrible suffering that our veterans must have endured. And whatever the war, whatever the campaign, endure they did.
For the ground forces in the mud, muck and mire of the trenches, if bullet or bayonet did not get you, disease would. Whether in the freezing cold of the blood soaked European battlefields or in the hell holes of prison camps in Hong Kong and Japan, or in the rice paddies of Korea, death was never far away. Death by dogfight or enemy flak met our airmen. Treacherous seas and death by wolfpack awaited our seamen.
We have also read the impersonal statistics of war: over 60,000 slain in World War I, over 42,000 in World War II, 516 lost in Korea. Nor have our peacekeepers been immune from death and terrible wounds. But they are just numbers on a page. They do not tell the human tragedy behind each and every loss.
I have a letter that I think does put a personal face on the tragedy, the suffering and the loss. It is a letter written to his mother by a young army lieutenant serving in France on the eve of the battle of Amiens on August 7, 1918, very close to the end of the war. He was one of five brothers who served in the great war and in the extract from this powerful letter he makes reference to three of his brothers. The words speak for themselves.
Dearest Mother,
This is the evening before the attack and my thoughts are with you all at home, but my backward glance is wistful, only because of the memories and because of the sorrow that would befall and darken your lives should anything happen to me in tomorrow's fray. Otherwise my eye is fixed on tomorrow with hope for mankind and with visions of a new world. A blow will be struck tomorrow which will definitely mark the turn of the tide—
I have no misgivings for myself in tomorrow's encounter. It does not matter whether I survive or fall. A great triumph is certain, and I shall take part in it. I shall strike a blow for freedom, along with thousands of others who count personal safety as nothing when freedom is as stake—
We shall strive only to achieve victory. We shall not hold our lives dear. The hour is all the more dramatic for me because, for the first time since I came to France, I am close to the spot consecrated by the blood of our gallant dead.
It was here that noble Raymond fell and Joe and Kenneth shed their blood in freedom's cause. I trust to be as faithful as they.
I shall be my mother and father's son tomorrow. Again God bless you all.
Your son Hedley.
The next day 110 men would fall in this battle and among the numbered dead was young Hedley Goodyear, in his early 20s.
War, freedom and peace are not just the business of government and the military. It is a personal concern, it is a personal issue, as this testimony of Remembrance Day holds fast.
Let us not forget. N'oublions jamais.