Remembrance Day

On June 28th, 1914 an assassination pulled Europe and the rest of the world into two major wars. World War One occurred nearly one hundred years ago, making it a distant memory. In July of this year Harry Patch, the last living soldier of WWI trench warfare passed away, leaving only three remaining World War One veterans alive. World War Two began seventy years ago, meaning anyone who served in it is in their eighties. We are quickly losing our living history - voices, memories, experiences, and sacrifices of veterans.

In World War One soldiers were faced with deplorable circumstances. They had to contend with disease, lice, frostbite, trench foot, mud, shell shock, and rats; along with the threat of being killed or maimed. British poet, Wilfred Owen, describes the plight of soldiers:

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till the haunting flares we turned our backs
And toward our distant rest we began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped, on blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Improvements in medicine, training, and technology eliminated some of these problems for soldiers in the second world war. Nevertheless soldier life was just as harsh. Weapons were larger, more modern, and more lethal. Soldiers also had to battle weather (cold winters in Europe and the heat in the South Pacific and northern Africa), diseases such as malaria, hunger, dehydration, and sleep deprivation as a result of frequent advances.

On Wednesday we will pause and reflect on those who sacrificed so much for our freedom. 60,000 Canadian soldiers were killed in World War One, another 150,000 wounded. In World War Two 42,000 soldiers were killed and 50,000+ returned home injured. The Korean War left 520 soldiers dead and 1600 hurt. 116 and 133 Canadian soldiers have died in peacekeeping operations and Afghanistan respectively.

During that time we must also pay respect to innocent civilians who also lost their lives as a result of world conflicts:
- the millions of citizens forced into labour in Germany and Japanese-occupied areas of Asia and the South Pacific.
- the hundreds of thousands of people living in cities of China, England, Germany, and Japan which were firebombed by either Axis or Allied air forces.
- Korean and other "comfort women" forced to become sex slaves for the Imperial Japanese Army.
- the six million plus Jews, homosexuals, disabled, Poles, Romani, and Jehovah's Witnesses murdered by the Third Reich.
- the 300,000 civilians killed by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Please attend a Remembrance Day service, donate to the Royal Canadian Legion, or reflect in your way and pay your respects.

Lest we forget.