Every year, every day, something else comes along to further the respect we feel for those who sacrificed everything and went to war.
In our eyes, my father-in-law is a hero. Several generations of Mackenzies (under a variety of surnames) have felt this way. He was recognized during World War Two with a Distinguished Flying Cross among other medals. He was recognized in the Canadian armed forces as he headed up Central Flying School (no one in the Canadian Air Force could fly without his say so!) He was recognized locally for his accomplishments, and asked to speak to school children as the local education system reached out in a “crossing generations” series of interviews and activities. He was recognized in the Queen’s Honours list of 2016 with a British Empire Medal for services to his country.
Most recently he was recognized by the French government and awarded the Legion of Honour. It’s a beautiful medal.
This year, he will read the Lesson in church as part of Dornoch Cathedral’s Remembering Sunday service. He is one of only two living World War II veterans in this community, and has read the lesson on this special Sunday for as many years as we can remember. This year is special as Remembering Sunday commemorates the 100th anniversary of the end of World War One, and actually falls on November 11.
My father too is a hero although unsung. He must have been 16 when he joined the navy because he was barely 20 when the war ended. We heard his funny stories, but none of the serious or tragic ones. We know his home port was Londonderry, Ireland; we know his ship was in the Barbados for a while; we know he was “in the water” twice; we know he was “captain” of the guns crew. We know when launched his ship’s sister didn’t even make it out of the Saint Lawrence Seaway before being torpedoed. And we know his ship was one of the ones laying down a smoke screen on D-Day.
Many of our European trips have taken us to Belgium and France where we have paid our respects at many war memorials, cemeteries and battle grounds. We spent one Remembrance Day a few years back, in a small French Village where everyone in the community was there as the names of the dead were read and remembered with “Mort pour la France”.
We recently went down the road to a small village south of here, Cromarty. In all honesty, we went for the restaurant. Who knew that a village of 700 or 800 people would have a Michelin recognized restaurant. Well Cromarty does.
After our lunch, we wandered the town, and followed a sign to the Gaelic Chapel. This ruin was on the edge of the local cemetery, and we walked through, reading headstones, until we came to a memorial for those from Cromarty and area who had died in World War One. What devastation that war wreaked everywhere. But in Cromarty and places like Cromarty, it was overwhelming. Four rows of headstones lead up to the memorial…two rows facing in to a grassy centre, each row backed by matching graves facing out. I didn’t count the graves. But I knew that for a place the size of Cromarty, those graves represented almost all of that generation.
We take so much for granted. But every now and then, a revelation like this, almost an epiphany, brings us to our senses and shows us the reality of war. Those who promote war should stand in a war cemetery and look … crosses in every direction as far as the eye can see.
Such loss.
I remember walking through a New Zealand – Australia war cemetery in Belgium. A man, a stranger to me, walked up to me, crying, shaking his head saying “So many dead. So many. And what have we learned?”
The exit from In Flanders Fields, the war museum in Ypres, is topped with a banner of triangular flags each recognizing a war fought since World War Two. They are almost beyond counting and they echo this stranger’s grief. What have we learned indeed.
Let us learn. Let us not forget.
