Their Sacrifice... Their Courage

A while ago, I was astonished to discover that Winston Churchill felt that he and his generation never measured up to his father and his generation. I think that for him, it was his measure in what he would call “the strength to endure”. Now I, and my generation, look in the mirror, and most of us don’t even have a clue what those four words mean. In this last quarter of STRIDE both the publisher and I decided to give a retrospective on the year of the verteran.

I wrestle with the paradox of knowing veterans yet not understanding them. I have known veterans of WW1, WW2, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, yet I don’t understand. I read the history, I’ve been told the stories, I’ve seen their faces, their eyes have looked into mine, yet I don’t understand.

I don’t know what it’s like to kiss your loved ones goodbye — hugging a son or daughter at a train station for what might be the last time. I don’t know what it’s like to be on a ship in a convoy in the North Atlantic while one of your sister ships has been torpedoed and burning. I don’t know what it’s like to have death rained down on me from a bomber or be scared senseless during a mortar attack while trying to hide in a trench. I don’t know what it’s like to be a parent and open the door to a man in uniform, staring at the mat, holding a letter with my name on it.

I’ve never had to dig the bodies of my neighbours out of what’s left of their house. I’ve never bought a war bond or hoarded my rations. I don’t know; I am ignorant in the classic sense of the word.

Here’s what I do know and understand. I know how we got there from here. I know how we as a species climbed the greasy pole of civilization. I know how towns formed into cities, and countries into nations. I know how the powers of monarchies were challenged and fell. I know how dictatorships rise and why they must fall. I know why the power of religion has to be held in check. I also know how conflict arises and how wars start, and I also know how wars end.

I know that no system is perfect or can be made perfect.

And I know all things have a cost. I have stood by the graves of American soldiers on Canadian soil and Canadian soldiers on French soil. I have been to the Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbour and looked up the valley and tried to imagine that day in December 1941 when a wave of Japanese aircraft changed the course of history. I just can’t imagine it — it’s too big — but I can tell you I came away with a different kind of sobriety.

I also know about civilization, and how it’s built and defended, as Churchill said, with blood, sweat and tears. Prices have to be paid, and sometimes they are paid on the backs of the willing and unwilling, the brave and the cowardly. War has a cost, and more often than not, a terrible cost. But this country of ours has come to realize that over the last 40 years, peace has had a cost as well.

We as a nation, are heavily involved in peacekeeping. Parents today see their sons and daughters off to indeterminate wars, some for the last time. Canadians still lose their lives to the enemy, ‘friendly fire’, and ‘technical malfunctions’. Families still look at photos on mantels and think ‘Johnny would have been 70 this year,’ but some look and think ‘Johnny would have been 20 this year…’ The only difference is that today, the photos are in colour.

Canada is unique in one respect, we’ve never seen one of our cities pounded like London during the Blitz, burned like Dresden or Tokyo, we’ve never seen a siege like Stalingrad. Vancouver or Montreal never vanished in an instant like Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and for that, we can be profoundly thankful.

I don’t know the answers, but this I do know; I have been around veterans, I have walked amongst giants and been humbled, but as the mists of time gather, I feel the giants vanishing over the horizon. “We just ain’t raisin’ ‘em up like we used to,” an old farmer once remarked to me. Perhaps he, like Churchill, felt the weight of measuring up.

I am ignorant, but grateful in ways I can’t express; and I know I am blessed by veterans — by their sacrifice and their courage.