Remembrance Day

[karen freeinchristman]

In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army



[size=+1]IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow[/size]
[size=+1]Between the crosses row on row,[/size]
[size=+1]That mark our place; and in the sky[/size]
[size=+1]The larks, still bravely singing, fly[/size]
[size=+1]Scarce heard amid the guns below.[/size]

[size=+1]We are the Dead. Short days ago[/size]
[size=+1]We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,[/size]
[size=+1]Loved and were loved, and now we lie[/size]
[size=+1]In Flanders fields.[/size]

[size=+1]Take up our quarrel with the foe:[/size]
[size=+1]To you from failing hands we throw[/size]
[size=+1]The torch; be yours to hold it high.[/size]
[size=+1]If ye break faith with us who die[/size]
[size=+1]We shall not sleep, though poppies grow[/size]
[size=+1]In Flanders fields.[/size]

 

[LiberatedChick]

 

[Fish and Bread]

Armistice Day is one of my favorite holidays, because I get to go around wishing people a Happy Armistice Day. Then they all get a confused look and I get to explain that the proper name for the holiday is in fact Armistice Day, because it celebrates the anniversary of the armistice between the allied and central powers which ended World War I. The agreement was signed on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. Really, properly speaking, it's a celebration of peace. I never liked the change that came after World War 2 in the United States, where is it now known as Veterans Day. Granted, it occurred many years before my birth, but I still don't recognize it, kind of like an Old Calendarist Eastern Orthodox person. Now, granted, I love our veterans, but they can have a different day! Armistice Day should be on Armistice Day, and also incorporates honoring those who have fought on our behalf.

John

 

[LiberatedChick]

I don't see Rememberance Day as a happy occasion. Yes, the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month was the end of WW1 but the day was set up a year later not to celebrate peace...but to remember those who died for it.

Remembrance Day is specifically dedicated to members of the armed forces who were killed during war, and was created by King George V of the United Kingdom on November 7, 1919 upon the suggestion of Edward George Honey.

 

[karen freeinchristman]

Armistice Day is one of my favorite holidays, because I get to go around wishing people a Happy Armistice Day. Then they all get a confused look and I get to explain that the proper name for the holiday is in fact Armistice Day, because it celebrates the anniversary of the armistice between the allied and central powers which ended World War I. The agreement was signed on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. Really, properly speaking, it's a celebration of peace. I never liked the change that came after World War 2 in the United States, where is it now known as Veterans Day. Granted, it occurred many years before my birth, but I still don't recognize it, kind of like an Old Calendarist Eastern Orthodox person. Now, granted, I love our veterans, but they can have a different day! Armistice Day should be on Armistice Day, and also incorporates honoring those who have fought on our behalf.

John

This may be how it is looked upon in America, but not here in Britain. It is not a celebration of peace, it is a tribute and a thanksgiving for those who paid for our freedom with their lives.
I might be able to see it as a celebration of peace, if, after that treaty was signed, we never had another war. How can we really celebrate peace, when peace is not evident over all the earth?

 

[puppy]

 

[Naomi4Christ]

When you go home, tell them of us and say, "for your tomorrow, we gave our today".


Wear your poppy with pride.

 

[DarthDigger]

When you go home, tell them of us and say, "for your tomorrow, we gave our today".


Wear your poppy with pride.

It was school photo day today....

I think that (including me) only about 20 people must have been wearing poppies!

P.S. Karen - I like your new clothes!

 

[karen freeinchristman]

It was school photo day today....

I think that (including me) only about 20 people must have been wearing poppies!

That's cool, Darth!

Here's something from www.licc.org.uk

Armistice Day

There is, the preacher of Ecclesiastes reminds us, a time for everything and a season for every activity under heaven.

The problem for many of us today is that the time is now and the activity should have been done yesterday.

Our supermarkets offer us fruit all year round, and our seasons blur. Our airlines offer us cheap flights to anywhere, and our sense of elsewhere evaporates. Our TV offers us worlds without end, and our own still, small moments of weeping and laughter, mourning and dancing, seem dull in comparison.

We have lost the rhythm of life, its melody drowned in sound, the sound lost in noise.

For this reason alone, Armistice Day is important. It's a moment to remember, to reflect, above all to stop. The two-minute intrusion into our day, interrupting meetings, halting journeys, silencing radios, can help re-source us, linking us to past and future, rooting us in time and place. It can remind us where we are, who we are, and even why we are.

But Armistice Day is more than just about returning rhythm to our lives. It is about sacrifice, tragedy, comradeship and hope. It is the intrusion of death into life.

The Bible is clear about death. It does not romanticise it or see it as a mere brief pause in life. Death is the enemy of God's good creation, the enemy that God himself came to defeat. It is the weapon of tyrants, whom God disarms.

If, as is sometimes the way today, we refuse to acknowledge that enemy or to remember its destructive power, our celebration of its defeat, and everything that means for us and for all creation, is dulled.

This Armistice Day we will remember the horrors of the trenches, and the disturbing fact that those horrors have now nearly slipped from memories to memoirs. We will also remember the many soldiers and civilians killed since those guns went silent.

But we should also remember that even in the midst of life we are in death, albeit one overcome by the Life itself.

And we may also remember that, in spite of our permanent global summertime, our 24/7 culture, our frenzied daily lives, there is a time to speak and a time to be silent.

 

[TomUK]

Lest we forget

 

[diggerman]

My father was in world war 2....... I was alive, but as baby.

 

[BishopGodsey]

[font=&quot]May God bless all of our veterans for their service and their sacrifice.[/font]

 

[jehovahjireh2007]

For those of us in England the two minutes silence was shown on TV. I recorded it and watched it. To us here in England it is more a case of "lest we forget" rather than a celebration of peace. I think it is vital that Armistice Day is remembered in years to come.I will certainly wear my poppy with pride.

Derbystudent

 

[pmcleanj]

A new young engineer, recently arrived in Calgary, I took an early lunch on my first November eleventh here, to go over to the cenotaph for the eleven o'clock ceremonies. I was not alone: several other office workers had apparently done the same. But no ceremonies took place. The official ceremony, we discovered, took place in the warmth of the Jubilee auditorium on the other side of the river, while those of us who hadn't bothered to check times and venues in that morning's newspapersihevered in the meager heat from the Eternal Flame. And since the allotted hour given us for lunch was running out, we stood in silent gratitude for two minutes, and headed back to our offices.

But the following November eleventh we all showed up at eleven o'clock again. And the next. And at some point -- I can't remember precisely what year, someone started bringing a bugle. Some years, a piper also turns out. More people show up every year. The year my first daughter was born she joined us, and I laid flowers on her behalf. The next year she was able to toddle up to the cenotaph herself at the end of the two minutes silence and place the flowers for "te bwave gentlemen and ladies" herself.

It has been twenty-four years since I accidentally attended my first of these unofficial Calgary cenotaph memorials. This year a couple of hundred people filled the spquare around the cenotaph in Memorial Park. Powder-puff-blue and CF-green berets, along with older carefully-preserved uniforms were sprinkled among the crowd, but the majority were in civilian dress and many held children by the hand. This year, a military honour guard stood with rifles reversed around the cenotaph. The buglar played The Last Post. The Piper played a lament. Men removed their hats and we stood with bowed heads for two silent minutes.

In front of me in the crowd a man who had been walking home through the park with two bags of groceries set them down and stood silent in respect. The American flag patch on the back of his jacket harmonized with the Maple Leaf and Union Jack framing our Red Ensign on the cenotaph. Across the square a young Muslim mother held her child. A group of Asian teens looked on solemnly. This history, this pain, this need to remember: we do not bear it alone. The whole world shares our need to remember, and remembering, to recommit to the promise of "Never Again". Never again seek glory through war. Never again spend lives for the sake of triumphalism. But also, never again to imagine that we can sit by while unjust wars wrack other nations; never again let the cancer of greed and violence spread unchecked because we think our country to be immune.

Then, the Canadian Pacific Rail train-whistle blasted its piercing memorial to our war-dead, and the piper and buglar played again. In twos and threes the people moved forward to place their poppies on the cenotaph or lay flowers on the steps. The honour guard departed at a slow march. And that was all.

No speeches, no celebrity master of ceremonies, no organiseers. Just scores of Calgarians who, at the eleventh hour every year, show that they know how to do what is right, and are teaching their children to do the same.

 

[karen freeinchristman]

That is beautiful, Pamela!

 

[Fish and Bread]

That's a wonderful story! Thanks for sharing it with us, Pamela.

John

 

[trooper]

ANy veterans in STR?

 

[xristos.anesti]

ANy veterans in STR?

5th/7th Bn. The Royal Australian Regiment (Infantry), Corporal.




I was that which others cared not to be.
I went where others feared to go.
And I did what others failed to do.

And, reluctantly, accepted the thought of eternal
loneliness should I fail.
I have hoped, pained, cried.

But, foremost lived in times others would say best forgotten.
At the very least, in latter days, I will be able to say
With greatest pride that,

“I was indeed – A Soldier”




They shall grow not 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.

 

[marciebaby]

My husband is an Air Force pilot, and is overseas now. My mom was talking with my daughter on the phone, and told her it was Veteran's day and asked if she knew any veterans.
"What's a veteran?"
"Someone who serves in the military."
"I think my uncles and grandpa are in the military."
"Is there anyone else you know who's in the military? How about Daddy?"
"My dad's not in the military! He's in the Air Force!"

We laughed about that one all day.