A grey Monday afternoon. November the eleventh. I am back home at my small writing table.
I did not go to drink beer with veterans after the Remembrance Day Ceremony, because I attended alone. I haven’t had a survivor guilt dream for (I think) a decade. Back when my platoon had our ten year reunion none of us expressed any survivor guilt. We were young, about age 30. If I met one of them now, I wonder what we would say? When a boy I was acquainted with—from knowing his parents—was killed in action in Afghanistan, I grieved very heavily for him and his folks. Now I wonder if I was grieving for other boys too, but didn’t know it.
My formative years were when everybody had long hair and many had some desperate ideas about war and peace. If you remember that crazy Star Trek episode where the people tried to prevent war by stepping into disintegration chambers, well, back then the ideas in literature and on the street were equally crazy. Peaceniks, forgetting that regular folks did not use the word “unilateral” in real life, would tell us we should “unilaterally disarm.” All I could do was keep my head down, or as my peers would say, “keep a low profile.”
Sitting at my table now, I reflect: “To understand all is to forgive all.” I understand now—I didn’t then—that any woman who would express fervent abuse towards me was desperately flailing about, trying to do something, anything, for peace. Some of the males—and this I knew even then—were acting out “tall poppy syndrome.” Or as they say in Japan, “The nail that sticks up gets hammered down.” Or as the bullies who smash Bart Simpson’s trophy say, “We go after people who do things.”
Last Friday night… at the Alexandra Writers’ Centre Society, I was in a crowded meeting room—we had to bring in extra chairs—for a book launch for a World War I anthology. I didn’t expect to learn anything, or feel anything, or get involved—in fact, I spent my best quality time standing in the back conversing with a Canadian poet who had a brother who served in Vietnam. I sat at the very back. To me, the most noteworthy thing was when I felt I had to walk up and learn forward between the young couple in front of me. They, and a man near the front, had stood up when “those who served” were asked to stand. “I stood up too,” I whispered to them, “there were four of us.” I didn’t want them to feel so alone.
Earlier today… I was in a crowded overflow room for the Remembrance Day ceremony: We had a screen with a sound system to the main room. Of course my mind wandered. I was at an outdoor service, back when I was a teenager in cadets, when those who served in the First World War were asked to stand. Only one old man stood.
(By the way, cadets are not legally part of the armed forces and they do not swear an oath to the queen)
Suddenly: “Would those who served in any capacity please stand.” Well. I knew, in that sacred place, that I had a duty to be present. So I stood, feeling modest and weak. Arms handing down, fingers on thighs. The only one standing in a room where everyone else was seated.
Soon the service ended. We all stood to leave. The man behind me shook my hand. With a grip strong and friendly, a grip to give me strength all day, he said, “Thank you for your service.”
Sean Crawford
Written November 11, 2019
Posted as trees turn to gold,
On the khaki plains,
September 2020
Afterthoughts:
~The “24th annual service” was not advertised in the newspaper. It was just outside the old city limits at Mountain View Memorial Gardens & Funeral Home. Out on the 1A, having swans in the wee artificial lake.
~Near the new highway interchange, (the 201 and the 1A) near my home, is a pond with bullrushes, where I have twice seen a pair of swans. Humans may suffer the land to be bulldozed or bombed… while the larks and swans abide.
~ Here’s a link to some Juno Award winning lengthy splendid music I heard Monday night on CKUA, Alberta’s donor supported radio: Flanders Reflections by John Burge.
~ Juno Beach at Normandy (My dad landed ten days later) on D-Day was assaulted solely by Canadians… while two other beaches were being assaulted by our gallant American allies…
