Lest We Forget: Pass it On

I did not wear a poppy last year on Remembrance Day.  It wasn’t a statement: I simply forgot.

But as I learned today on the shores of Dieppe, forgetting is a statement.

Yesterday I visited the famed Flanders Fields of John McCrae’s poem.  Rows of crosses, row on row.  Thousands and thousands of them.  Each representing a boy-child, son, husband, father, lost on the Ypres Salient in World War I, gaining a mere eight kilometres for the Allies through the many months of brutal attacks.  Stones marked “A soldier of the Great War, known unto God” because their bodies could not be identified in the carnage.  Men lost to the first crippling gas attacks, in the days before gas masks.  Men whose body parts could not be sorted from the others and reassembled for a proper burial.  Men who died, and died, and died again, not knowing the outcome of the war that was supposed to end all wars.

Today I walked the beaches of Dieppe and touched the cliffs that saw thousands of Canadian soldiers killed or taken prisoner by the Nazis in 1942.  «La mer était rouge» (The sea was red), according to a book I read chronicling the events of that tragic day.  Bodies upon bodies.  Tanks, ships, and airplanes blown apart.  Men gunned down, trapped between the cliffs and the sea, their bodies washed ashore for weeks to come, as far north as Holland.  All for a failed offensive against an oppressive regime set on taking over the world — and on its way to doing just that.

At the memorial museum, our tour guide looked at us with eyes of gratitude.  The operation did not succeed, she said, but it was the first step towards the end of the war.  We saw footage of the victory parade on the streets of Dieppe two years later.  After years of terror and insanity, France, and the world, were free.

I saw the tombstone of a fifteen-year-old boy in Flanders.  I saw the weapons and uniforms of the Hamilton and Mont-Royal regiments in France.  I saw, in my heart, the stricken faces of their mothers when they learned their boys would not be coming home.  I saw the chagrin of those whose loved ones returned unrecognizable, ravaged by injury, addiction, and PTSD.  I saw war, and the great, great sadness looming over this place.  

How do people carry on their lives here, knowing that such things have come to pass on their very doorstep? I am sitting at a table overlooking the beach right now, having just devoured a delicious hamburger garnished with camembert.  Below me is a party of adults eating cherries and drinking rosé.  Behind me children play with a soccer ball, and cyclists walk their bikes up to the barrier and peer over the edge.  In the streets beyond, shopkeepers sell their wares, gamblers try their luck at the casino, and swimmers do laps in the pool.  The seagulls call, the waves roll, the breeze wafts through my hair.  All is normal.  Idyllic.  Peaceful.  Do the ghosts of the dead hover over these moments of bonheur? 

Just hours ago I had the honour of playing the Olympic Hymn with my band as the torch passed through the streets of Dieppe on its way to Paris.  There was fanfare and cheering.  Crowds assembled and flags waved.  Joy everywhere.  Pride.  Elation.

And I was moved to tears, playing this music of freedom and triumph on the streets that were once overrun by Nazis gunning down human beings like animals.  What a privilege to be asked to play at such an event, in any place and at any time.  But to play in this place, and at this time, was unforgettable.  It is because of these men, and the women who mourned them, that I hold a Canadian passport and not a German one; that I can travel freely from country to country, exploring the world with unbounded liberty.  It is because of them that the nations of the world can unite to engage in sport and celebration every few years, running with a flame from place to place without fear of reprisal or imprisonment.  It is because of them that the waves roll today onto a peaceful beach with a manicured boardwalk, cherries, and rosé.

I bought three glass poppies at the museum today after my tour.  I will wear them with pride and sobriety this November, and every November from now on.  And as I do, I will reflect on the many other great wars that are ravaging our world right now.  The brutality continues in the Ukraine and in Gaza; its seeds are present in the turning tide of politics in America and elsewhere.  Racism and cruelty persist in every echelon of society.  Lessons have not been learned.  As a world, we have forgotten.  A billion poppies would not be enough to atone for the atrocities we inflict on one another, across and within borders, every day.  

On this Dieppe beach I am appalled, weeping, grateful at the course our world has taken.  I am all of these, because those who came before were all of these for me.  

A swimmer bobs now on the waves, oblivious to the corpses that once won his freedom in this very place.  The cliffs in the distance stand guard.  Ships line the horizon.  All is well, except where it is not.

God save us from ourselves, and grant us some good sense, lest we forget.