Veterans Day

I always have good intentions for days like Veterans Day, but they haven't always come to fruition. I suppose that's because previously that day hasn't really been carved in my heart. Growing up I don't remember much mention of Veterans Day--it was always a misunderstood afterthought as I'd wonder why the library was closed or the mail didn't come and then I'd get the explanation, "It's Veterans Day." Okay, so what? What a shame. I don't know why that was, nor do I understand how WWI somehow never made it on my internal hard drive of history. I knew it happened, but never knew why or much else about it. 

During my adult years I've slowly learned more and have wanted my children to appreciate and observe Veterans Day. Some years I've succeeded in marking the day, but we haven't been consistent and I've always felt we should do more. It doesn't help that November 11 somehow seems to sneak up on me. I'm in autumn mode, then Thanksgiving mode, and Veterans Day just kind of surprises me there in the middle.

This year, thanks to being subscribed to thatartistwoman (who, bless her, creates a poppy and Remembrance Day art project annually) I was reminded earlier than the day before--or the day of--and was able to plan ahead.

I wanted to incorporate Gail's Poppy Patterns with learning "In Flanders Fields." That was the beginning of my plan, along with some basic background and history.

IN FLANDERS FIELDS POEM

The World’s Most Famous WAR MEMORIAL POEM

By Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place: and in the sky

The larks still bravely singing fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead: Short days ago,

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved: and now we lie

In Flanders fields!

Take up our quarrel with the foe

To you, from failing hands, we throw

The torch: be yours to hold it high

If ye break faith with us who die,

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields

Composed at the battlefront on May 3, 1915 

during the second battle of Ypres, Belgium

We began our day singing the hymn, "God of Our Fathers, Known of Old," the text of which was written by Rudyard Kipling.

Thanks to my friend, Audrey, we were pointed in the direction of a few other great resources for the day.  My favorites were this dramatic reading of "In Flanders Fields" by Leonard Cohen...

... and the video reading of The Poppy Lady, an inspiring biographical picture book of Moina Belle Michael by Barbara Walsh.

We Shall Keep the Faith

by Moina Michael, November 1918

Moina Michael

Oh! you who sleep in Flanders Fields,

Sleep sweet - to rise anew!

We caught the torch you threw

And holding high, we keep the Faith

With All who died.

We cherish, too, the poppy red

That grows on fields where valor led;

It seems to signal to the skies

That blood of heroes never dies,

But lends a lustre to the red

Of the flower that blooms above the dead

In Flanders Fields.

And now the Torch and Poppy Red

We wear in honor of our dead.

Fear not that ye have died for naught;

We'll teach the lesson that ye wrought

In Flanders Fields.

The above poem was Moina's personal, quickly penned poetic pledge after reading "In Flanders Fields. She certainly made good on her pledge!  I think her poem is just as compelling.

I was also grateful that we were able to tie into our biology and botany studies discussing the conditions in which the poppies were able to flourish on a battlefield, namely that the churned, war-torn earth surfaced the dormant seeds and conditions, including an unusually warm spring, were suited to the poppies thriving. The poppies are not just a symbol of remembrance, but also a symbol of hope, of life after death.


Here are photos of a couple of our projects at the end of the day, mine and one of my children's.

All Quiet on the Western Front - War

The following excerpt, from Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, is full of timeless and universal insight. It should be read and pondered and remembered by all.

For me, it's all the more remarkable, provoking, and poignant that it is a discussion among the common soldiers of "the enemy." AQWF is, after all, written from the perspective of a young German soldier. (Remarque was a German veteran of WWI.)

At last the moment arrives. We stand up stiff and the Kaiser appears. We are curious to see what he looks like. He stalks along the line, and I am really rather disappointed; judging from his pictures I imagined him to be bigger and more powerfully built, and above all to have a thundering voice.

     He distributes Iron Crosses and speaks to this man and to that. Then we march off.

     Afterwards we discuss it. Tjaden says with astonishment:

     So that is the All-Highest! And everyone, bar nobody, has to stand up stiff in front of him!"...

     ..."And would a king have to stand up to an emperor?"

     None of us is quite sure about it, but we don't suppose so. They are both so exalted that standing strictly to attention is probably not insisted on.

     "What rot you do hatch out," says Kat. "The main point is that you have to stand stiff yourself."

     But Tjaden is quite fascinated. His otherwise prosy fancy is blowing bubbles. "But look," he announces, "I simply can't believe than an emperor has to go to the latrine the same as I have."

     "You can bet your boots on it."

     ...

     Tjaden disappears.

     "But what I would like to know," says Albert, "is whether there would not have been a war if the Kaiser had said No."

     "I'm sure of this much," I interject, "he was against it from the first."

     "Well, if not him alone, then perhaps if twenty or thirty people in the world had said No."

     "That's probable," I agree, "but they damned well said Yes."

     "It's queer, when one thinks about it," goes on Kropp, "we are here to protect our fatherland. And the French are over there to protect their fatherland. Now, who's in the right?"

     "Perhaps both," say I, without believing it.

     "Yes, well now," pursues Albert, and I see that he means to drive me into a corner, "but our professors and parsons and newspapers say that we are the only ones that are right, and let's hope so; --but the French professors and parsons and newspapers say that the right is on their side, what about that?"

     "That I don't know," I say, "but whichever way it is there's war all the same and every month more countries coming in."

     Tjaden reappears. He is still quite excited and again joins the conversation, wondering just how a war gets started.

     "Mostly by one country badly offending another," answers Albert with a slight air of superiority.

     "Then Tjaden pretends to be obtuse. "A country? I don't follow. A mountain in Germany cannot offend a mountain in France. Or a river, or a wood, or a field of wheat."

     "Are you really as stupid as that, or are you just pulling my leg?" growls Kropp. "I don't mean that at all. One people offends the other--"

     "Then I haven't any business here at all," replies Tjaden, "I don't feel myself offended."

     "Well, let me tell you," says Albert sourly, "it doesn't apply to tramps like you."

     "Then I can be going home right away," retorts Tjaden, and we all laugh.

     "Ach, man! he means the people as a whole, the State--" exclaims Muller.

     "State, State"--Tjaden snaps his fingers contemptuously. "Gendarmes, police, taxes, that's your State;--if that's what you are talking about, no thank you."

     "That's right," says Kat, "you've said something for once, Tjaden. State and home-country, there's a big difference.

     "But they go together," insists Kropp, "without the State there wouldn't be any home-country."

     "True, but just you consider, almost all of us are simple folk. And in France, too, the majority of men are labourers, workmen, or poor clerks. Now just why would a French blacksmith or a French shoemaker want to attack us? No, it is merely the rulers. I had never seen a Frenchman before I came here, and it will be just the same with the majority of the Frenchmen as regards us. They weren't asked about it any more than we were.

     "Then what exactly is the war for?" asks Tjaden.

     "Kat shrugs his shoulders. "There must be some people to whom the war is useful."

     "Well, I'm not one of them," grins Tjaden.

     "Not you, nor anybody else here."

     "Who are they then?" persists Tjaden. "It isn't any use to the Kaiser either. He has everything he can want already."

     "I'm not so sure about that," contradicts Kat, "he has not had a war up till now. And every full-grown emperor requires at least one war, otherwise he wouldn't become famous. You look in your school books."

     ...

     "But there are more lies told by the other side than by us," say I; "just think of those pamphlets the prisoners have on them, where it says that we eat Belgian children. The fellows who write that ought to go and hang themselves. They are the real culprits."

     Muller gets up. "Anyway, it is better that the war is here instead of in Germany. Just you take a look at the shell-holes.

     "True," assents Tjaden, "but no war at all would be better still."

All Quiet on the Western Front - Chance

   

 "The front is a cage in which we must await fearfully whatever may happen. We lie under the network of arching shells and live in a suspense of uncertainty. Over us Chance hovers. If a shot comes, we can duck, that is all; we neither know nor can determine where it will fall.     It is this Chance that makes us indifferent. A few months ago I was sitting in a dug-out playing skat; after a while I stood up and went to visit some friends in another dug-out. On my return nothing more was to be seen of the first one, it had been blown to pieces by a direct hit. I went back to the second and arrived just in time to lend a hand digging it out. In the interval it had been buried.     It is just as much a matter of chance that I am still alive as that I might have been hit. In a bomb-proof dug-out I may be smashed to atoms and in the open may survive ten hours' bombardment unscathed. No soldier outlives a thousand chances. But every soldier believes in Chance and trusts his luck."

The above is a quote from All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. It's one of many passages in the book that really affected me.  To try to imagine being there with the constant shelling, feeling the personal vulnerability of the Front, and experiencing the ever present rot, disease, death, pain and misery... and then to get to the point that you're indifferent to it because you believe it's just a matter of luck whether you live or die... 

I don't believe in Chance, I believe in God. I believe in agency and the ability to hear and feel the promptings of the Holy Spirit. We all will suffer in this life, and we all will die. But what a horridly hopeless feeling to go through life believing your existence is based on mere chance.