Remembrance Day 2007

If the war in Afghanistan has done nothing else, it's created a greater awareness of what was really is and the toll it takes on the lives of young men and women, and their families. We don't just 'remember' all of them on November 11 now; we remember them every day. When a section of the Hwy 401 was renamed recently, every Canadian felt intense pride in having done something 'right'. My family has a history of military service and it's them that I think about during the week leading up to Remembrance Day.
My grandfather joined the Army in 1916 and spent three years in France. In a wonderful audio tape my uncle had done, Grampa said he was the "lead driver on a 6-horse wagon team which carried wire (for munitions) to the front lines". A 2-man team would take the wire to a designated area and one man would carry the wire on his back while the other did the necessary work to lay it down. During the fighting at Vimy Ridge, soldiers had dug in to trenches for protection during some intense shelling. My grandfather said he jumped in to a trench, already occupied by three other soldiers. During a long, cold night, they all huddled together for safety and warmth, waiting for the shelling to stop. In the morning, as he was preparing to leave the trench and rejoin his group, he was horrified to discover that all three of the soldiers were dead--probably killed before he had jumped in the previous night.
My father joined the Army in 1942 and after dating Mother for a number of years, decided they had better get married before he left for England and training. Their wedding photo shows him in his new uniform, looking very young and handsome. As part of the engineering company that built fast, portable bridges across rivers in Europe, he was part of the advance unit that ensured men and vehicles could cross the Rhine and other rivers. Although he rarely spoke about his wartime experiences (except after a few beers with my brothers at the Legion), he once described watching a man dive under a jeep for protection during enemy fire and being buried alive as it sunk into deep mud during the shelling. My Mother used to say that he left a sweet young man and came back 4 years later as a hard drinking, tough soldier--she wasn't impressed!
My husband spent 25 years in the Air Force and fortunately, didn't have to experience combat, but was trained and ready to do what might have been necessary. After unification, he was immediately posted to a ship and I remember the absolute desolution of saying goodbye to him, with 2 little boys in tow, when he would leave for an exercise for 3 months. I hated it but believed my 'job' was to support him while he did his 'job'.
Military families today face challenges that I didn't, and I have so much respect and admiration for army spouses who know the chances are pretty big that their husband/wife is going to have to leave for Afghanistan--and could get hurt or killed. Not only do they have to face it once but rotation means they may have to face it two or three times!
War stinks and if there were a magic button any of us could push that would put an end to conflict anywhere, we would. Reality says that as long as we have people with individual ideas (religious, political, etc) who believe they've had something taken from them (property, individual rights, ideals, etc)--regardless of what country they live in--there is going to be conflict.
What we can do is remember those who went, and continue to go to war. Perhaps in that remembering, we'll learn tolerance and Remembrance Day will also be a Day of Hope.