This morning in a small Normandy village we stood, like countless others, and remembered those who never made it home. I find Remembrance Sunday in Britain moving but at least the French commemorate the end of The Great War on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month and not, as we British do, the nearest convenient weekend. It does seem almost disrespectful to arrange the day to suit modern calendars and working practices as opposed to the actual day the war ended.
I get very weepy seeing ex-servicemen weighed down with revived memories and clinking medals and thinking about what they and their comrades did for us. "When you go home, tell them of us and say, for your tomorrow we gave life today". Today was no exception. The local pompiers were out in force standing to attention with their shiny helmets in one hand and decorated Tricolors in the other. The mayor read a statement from the minister thanking foreigners who had come to fight and die on French soil in la der des ders (the war to end all wars). When he made particular mention of the British and Commonwealth soldiers, the Frenchman patted me on the back, and I took refuge behind my sunglasses even though it was threatening to rain.
A local bugler played the Sonnerie aux Morts - the French equivalent of the Last Post - and there was a minute's silence. The silence was broken only by a middle-aged café owner who decided to sweep his terrace at that very moment. A small local band played a valiant if somewhat weedy rendition of La Marseillaise. My mother-in-law told how during the Second World War people from the village successfully hid British and French Canadian servicemen from the Nazis in secret mushroom farms. (The Frenchman advises me to be wary of local legends about wartime heroics. He may be right - I cannot find any reference to this - but who knows?) I wished I had brought my paper poppies from London.
After the ceremony, I put a couple of euros into a tin being rattled by an old soldier who, judging by his age and medals, was a veteran of World War II. He takes my hand in both of his. They are worn and weathered, their fading veins like smudged lines on an old battle plan. They are surprisingly warm. He smiles and says: "Thank you. Thank you."
I say: "No. Thank you."
5 comments:
Remembrance day gets worse the older you get. Maybe it's having children, and thinking about the future, and wondering what kind of a world they are going to be in, and whether they will have to fight.
It's 90 years since the guns went silent at the end of The Great War - and it's right that we should still remember.
my grandfather fought in the first world war (the Great War, as he called it) but we could never get him to speak of it. he told his tale of running off with the highland regiment, and his mother seeing him march past from the window of their flat. but about his experiences in the trenches, and later in palestine, nothing.
i think perhaps this is why i weep so hard and feel great emotion when i read anything about the first war, and i always buy a poppy in rememberance of my grandfather -- who i never got to know well because he closed off a major part of his life to us. perhaps he didn't want us to think about the horrors, believing that by fighting he had spared us from them.
here in the States, we don't even get Veteran's Day (as it is called) off from work any longer. i watched some of the parade go by on 5th avenue with my sister by my side... but you really don't get the feeling it means much to anyone. most people here in my office don't even know what it's for... our Memorial Day (in May) has been turned into a weekend to kick off summer and have picnics or barbeques... it's a shame really.
I wrote about this too. Always deeply moving for me.
Yes for some reason it does become more emotional each year that passes. Perhaps it is because we develop a greater sense of empathy as we age. Just a thought, I don't know. Iota is right, I do seem to have become much more emotional since having a child.
Bonnie-Ann Black, many veterans of older wars seem to have difficulty speaking about their terrible experiences...and the more terrible the greater the difficulty. My grandfather was the same as yours. He took his war experiences to the grave.
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