Tuesday, November 10, 2009
When Will Bird was twenty three years old, in 1914, war broke out in Europe. His youngest brother, Stephen, enlisted immediately and shipped off to France. A year later he was dead. Will enlisted and took his brother's place in the front lines in Flanders, serving in one of the most famous Canadian units, the Black Watch.
Will Bird survived the war but most of his comrades did not. When he returned to Nova Scotia after the war young Will Bird became a writer and drew upon his experiences a number of times, his most famous work being “Ghosts Have Warm Hands”.
Bird’s recollections of his time in the trenches should be must reading for all students in this country.
His war was not one of heroism or glory, although there is plenty of the former present in his story. It is one of fear and sorrow and anger; despite the triumphs that Will Bird participates in at Vimy, Passchedaele and in the final hundred days of the war when the Canadian Corps spearheaded the Aliied victory he does not take any satisfaction from these triumphs, other than the fact that he has survived.
Poor Will Bird saw far more sadness than any man should ever see. And his burden would become far greater when his only son, also named Stephen, was killed in the next war, leading a company of North Nova Scotia Highlanders against the sons of the men whom his father had fought twenty five years before.
On Remembrance Day what should we think of Will Bird and what he and his family sacrificed?
We should remember that they did what they thought was right and that they fought and died for the freedom of others.
We should be aware that we are amongst the luckiest people to ever walk the earth, we Canadians. We have great wealth and freedom, unmatched by most people who have ever lived on this planet. We should be grateful for this. Some of this is luck and some of this is hardearned by the people who settled this land and by the people who protected and protect it. It’s a hard cruel world and the idea that we can stand idly by while others do the heavy lifting for democracy and security isn’t right, in my opinion.
We should be aware that we are more fortunate than most people and that does mean that we have responsibilities to make other people’s lives better.
And having read Will Bird, I can tell you that he would say that we must remember to question those in charge, that we must ask why we go to war, that we must always always question, because that is a freedom that we have and a freedom that he fought for and a freedom that his brother and his son died for. He himself used that freedom many times in his writing as he questioned and criticized what happened to he and his comrades in Flanders.
You may support the war or you may oppose it or you, like me, may be somewhere in between, supporting the troops and believing that their work is right, while also realizing that they participate in what is probably an unwinnable conflict, uneasily thinking that if my own boy were asked to go, I would beg of him not to. And if I am not willing to ask my own son to go then how can I ask others to go?
But wherever you sit you must, I think, respect those who are over there, just as we do those who went before. You must remember that our freedoms are many and earned and that they should never be taken for granted.
That is Remembrance Day for me.
Posted by Black Dog at 11:59 PM