Freedom always comes at a cost
More than 100 years after the last shots echoed across First World War battlefields and fully 75 years after the end of the Second, we still gather every Nov. 11 in the cold and damp to remember what it cost for us to live in freedom. The World Wars loom large, from the physical monuments to the date of Remembrance Day commemorating the Great War armistice. But we also recall other wars, from the Napoleonic campaigns to Korea, and backward to Salamis and forward to Afghanistan. Especially 30 years since the Berlin Wall fell we should remember those who stood firm, or ready, in smaller and sometimes frustratingly inconclusive conflicts and even defeats. Freedom is not free, never was and never will be.
As the waves roll endlessly over Juno Beach, and the snows fall, the rains come and the sun shines in Flanders, we can lose sight of the importance of these events. World War I in particular has an evil reputation, as a pointless slaughterhouse run by incompetents. But a world dominated by Wilhelmine Germany would have been very unpleasant, if not as bad as one dominated by Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito, or Stalin and Brezhnev. On Remembrance Day, and every day, let us not forget the difficulty as well as the importance of the struggles for freedom, or that for every Juno there is a Dieppe or a Beaumont Hamel and those who died in unsuccessful and even botched battles made no less noble a sacrifice.
We must also be careful, as the years pass, not to lose sight of this history entirely, so that names like Passchendaele or Imphal start to sound like Rochester Castle or Edington, of interest only to antiquaries. It is easy to take present blessings for granted and to slight the long story of those whose ordeals in battle made or preserved those blessings. Remembrance Day in Canada is noteworthy for uncomfortable fall conditions burdensome to elderly veterans.
But those conditions remind us of the toll war takes not only on those killed or wounded in body or mind, but also on those who endure the physical and mental discomfort, the cold and heat, dust and damp, boredom and terror, stress and strain, loss of friends and homecoming to a land and a family changed by the passage of time or made strange by the experience of combat they did not share.
In considering the situation of those grey- or whitehaired veterans who once more stand erect on November 11 despite the wind and cold, or sit erect in wheelchairs, let us also avoid the error of thinking that all veterans are old or have joined the White Company, that the Great War, like the English Civil War, Hundred Years’ War and Battle of Badon Hill are all part of a volume of human history now closed permanently and lodged on some dusty shelf, occasionally taken down, wiped off and read to children so that examples like Horatius on the bridge might inspire them to a different kind of courage for a different kind of world.
We pray for peace and in countries like Canada we do not start wars. We wish alternatives to conflict had been found in August of 1914 and September of 1939. But we remember the disaster in September of 1938 when an attempt to avoid war by accepting dishonour ended, as Churchill warned at the time, in both dishonour and war.
When the Berlin Wall fell, some told us history had ended. But it had not, as we were reminded just 12 years later on 9/ 11 when an attack on a friendly neighbour killed Canadians and drew us into the long and difficult Afghan mission. That war, like Korea, ended not with a victory parade and reconciliation with a humbled foe as in 1945 but in further trouble and danger. Reminding us once more that soldiers fight where they must for what can be attained in a struggle for liberty that is glorious because it is grim and difficult, not easy and enjoyable.
Finally, let those of us who did not serve also respect the very special fraternity, and sorority, of those who have worn a uniform, fired shots and been fired upon or stood ready to do so. They fight for one another and share memories, good and bad, that demand respect from outside that circle precisely because we are outside it. Whatever may have gone before or come after, we owe them a special debt.
The living we thank. The dead we remember. And if we cannot recall them as individuals, because it was so long ago, there were so many, or nobody recorded their names, we still remember that they were individuals who risked, and often gave, all their tomorrows for our freedom today.
FREEDOM IS NOT FREE, NEVER WAS AND NEVER WILL BE.