Scarce Heard Amid the Guns Below

Growing up, every year we would have school assemblies on Remembrance Day (Nov 11), and we would have a minute of silence at 11'clock am. There is a national memorial service in Ottawa every November, at the war memorial near Parliament Hill. Today we watched it on TV. Before the memorial, there was coverage from a funeral service for a servicewoman who was recently killed in Afghanistan. I always find these types of services moving. The most poignant of these experiences was in France two years ago.

In June 2004, as part of a tour by the Carleton University Choir, R was invited to sing in an international choir that would perform on Omaha Beach, on the Normandy coast of France, for the 60th anniversary of the D-Day Invasion. I had the opportunity to go with her. The concert on Omaha Beach was great, but the real highlight was a visit to the Canadian Cemetery at Beny-sur-Mer, near Juno Beach.
In the cemetery were buried more than 2000 Canadians, killed during the first weeks of the Normandy invasion (nearly 400 were killed the first day). While we were there, a charter-bus of Canadian WWII veterans arrived. The University Choir began an impromptu concert, singing (a capella) a musical adaption of "In Flanders Fields". The choir finished the number with difficulty, singing through tears. I wept like a baby.

In case you haven't had a chance to read it again this year, here is the poem In Flanders Fields, written by Canadian field surgeon Colonel John McCrae during World War I. McCrae wrote the poem in May 1915 near Ypres, France, the day after he had conducted a funeral service for a friend and former student from Ottawa.

In Flanders Fields
Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)

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.

If you had been in that cemetary -- if you had seen the veterans walking among headstones, row upon row -- you would have felt the same. Although the names of the dead were etched on most of the headstones, those who could not be identified say simply:

"A soldier
of the
Second World War
A Canadian Regiment

Known Unto God"