Remembrance Day

At the "eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" of 1918, the guns fell silent on the Western Front ending the Great War, the 'war to end all wars'. My Uncle Roy Wisemiller (the misspelling the army paymaster gave him, which he kept, and is engraved on his gravestone next to his brother, my father, Perry Weismiller!) was on the Western Front with the AEF, whilst my grandfather, Charles Albert Oxley, had been invalided back to Britain after serving with the Royal Field Artillery in Mesopotamia (Iraq). I'm sure they were overjoyed. Let us pray for the souls, both military and civilian, who died on both side of that great conflict.

"In Flanders Fields" by Lt Col. John Alexander MacCrae, M.D., Canadian Army, 1872-1918, died at the front of meningitis and pneumonia whilst serving in a field hospital.

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.

The Official Canadian translation into French:

Au champ d'honneur, les coquelicots
Sont parsemés de lot en lot
Auprès des croix; et dans l'espace
Les alouettes devenues lasses
Mêlent leurs chants au sifflement
Des obusiers.

Nous sommes morts,
Nous qui songions la veille encor'
À nos parents, à nos amis,
C'est nous qui reposons ici,
Au champ d'honneur.

À vous jeunes désabusés,
À vous de porter l'oriflamme
Et de garder au fond de l'âme
Le goût de vivre en liberté.
Acceptez le défi, sinon
Les coquelicots se faneront
Au champ d'honneur.

And, an answer to Lt Col McCrae, written after the Armistice:

We Shall Keep the Faith

by Moina Michael, November 1918

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 Ode of Remembrance

They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.

Lest We Forget!