In preparing for my Remembrance Day theme for the Three Churches I minister at, I came across this story on World War 1 Canadian army doctor John McCrae. To give credit where due, it is an excerpt from an article written by Charles MaGill and posted in Readers Digest magazine. The article is titled, The Story Behind “In Flanders Fields”. It reads as follows, “Early on the morning of May 3, 1915, John McCrae sat wearily near his field dressing station, a crude bunker cut into the slopes of a bank near the Ypres-Yser Canal in Belgium. A Canadian military surgeon, he had been at the French line for 12 days under incessant German bombardment, and the toll of dead and wounded had been appalling. From his position on the road along the canal running into Ypres, McCrae wrote: “I saw all the tragedies of war enacted. A wagon, or a bunch of horses or a stray man, would get there just in time for a shell. One could see the absolute knockout; or worse yet, at night one could hear the tragedy, a horse’s scream or the man’s moan. ”The previous night he had buried a good friend, Lt. Alexis Helmer of Ottawa, blown to pieces by a direct hit from a German shell. Now, as he sat in the early morning sunshine, he could hear the larks singing between the crash of the guns. He could see the rows of crosses in a nearby cemetery. The field where the cemetery lay was thick with scarlet poppies, their dormant seeds churned up by the guns, blooming despite—or because of—the carnage. McCrae took in the scene and quickly wrote a 15-line poem. Speaking as from the dead to the living, “In Flanders Fields” was to become the most famous poem of the Great War—perhaps of any war.”
John McCrae was one of 619,636 Canadians who served in World War 1 or the Great War. Canada had a population of 6.8 million people in 1914. Which means just over 1 in 10 went overseas to fight for our freedom. Of that number, 66,349 Canadians lost their lives. That is over 1 in 10 who served in the war. In World War Two, 1,159,000 Canadians answered the call to fight for our freedom. This was out of a population of 11.5 million, which equates to about one in ten Canadians went to war. Of that number 44,090 Canadians lost their lives. In the Korean War 26,791 Canadians served with 516 casualties. The Gulf War had 4,500 Canadians serve with 0 casualties. The war in Afghanistan saw 40,000 Canadians serve with 158 casualties. We also remember our peacekeepers who work hard to bring stability in hostile regions of our world. There has been 125,000 Canadians serve over the years, and 130 have lost their lives while on duty. There has been the Congo Crises, Somali Civil War, Bosnia War, Kosovo War, Malta, East Timor, Haiti, Libya, Iraq to name a few where our Peacekeepers operated. In our own military, in the army, air force and navy men and women dedicate their lives to serving. Grueling training as preparation. And in very short notice they could be sent to areas of conflict.
War is a fact of life. Sadly it seems as long as there are humans, there will be war. In past times, for a man to go to war, it was viewed as romantic and heroic. But, these ideas have faded and vanished throughout the course of the 20th century. War can be horrific, like a bad nightmare. Each human being who enlisted to fight for our freedom has a story just like John McCrae. For many, these stories were never told due to their death in battle. For others, the stories were so horrific they were never talked about. Many of our military lived a lifetime of PTSD and those stories went to the grave with them. This Remembrance Day we remember them. And we honour them. Lest We Forget.
Video Simple History.
Some other articles I’ve written for Remembrance Day.
The Vr Pro Remembrance Day 21k for the Juno Beach Centre.
My Sunday Blog 