I want to share with you excerpts from two letters written by WW1 Soldiers. The first comes from Alexander Decoteau, a young man born on Cree Red Pheasant Indian Reserve near Battleford, Sk in November 1887. He enlisted in April 1916 and died during the Battle of Passchendaele on October 30, 1917. This letter is dated September 10, 1917, and he writes:
Well, sis, in spite of the fact that we are used very decently by the French people, there’s no use denying the fact that we are all aching and longing for our own beloved Canada. Of course there’s work to be done yet and I supposed I will stay there till it is finished. A man has lots of time to think of his people and home out here, and one does get awfully lonesome at times. I know in my last trip to the front line, I dreamed of home and about “all the mothers, sisters, and sweethearts” I ever had.
Of course we have lots of fun too. It isn’t all hardships and loneliness out here. Most of the boys turn (fatalists) after a few months of fighting. They believe that everything is prearranged by Divine Power and if it’s one’s time to die no matter what one does, one has to die. Their motto is “if my turn comes next, I can’t do anything to avoid it,” so “I shouldn’t worry”.
They don’t worry either. Of course there are lots who suffer from shell shock or nervous breakdown, and they can’t fight against fear, but most of the boys have a keen sense of humor, and laugh at almost anything. I know of one in particular, a corporal. He is the life and wit of our party. A shell landed close to him one night and the concussion threw him on his head several yards away. The shock stunned him for a minute and when he came to, the first question he asked was “Is my head still on?”. That sent the rest of us into a roar, and only a minute before they were all ready to beat it to the nearest dugout.
It’s the likes of him that make army life bearable, and the army is full of such as he. Then we have our sports and games, concerts and pictures shows were one may forget his troubles awhile. But best of all cheering a soldier’s heart is a letter from “home.”
Alfred Herbert John Andrews was born in Qu’appelle, Saskatchewan, in 1888. He was a lawyer at the time he enlisted – in September 1914. He died in 1934. He writes:
On November 10 we were told that hostilities would cease at 11 AM the next day. We still refused to believe it. It was too good to be true. We held a parade at 11 AM and told the company the war was over. The boys were almost stunned, not a cheer. It was something they had dreamed about but never expected to see. They were going home. It was too soon to worry what was going to happen next.
The parade dismissed and it gradually dawned on them what it meant. In the afternoon we were inspected by the Divisional Commander. He said a few nice things about the Batt. And we were dismissed.
At night the Flying Corps near us shot up all the flares they had by way of celebration. But on November 12, we were warned to get ready to move to the bridge head in accordance with the armistice. There was a lot of talk among the men about not wanting to go.
At the time Armistice was signed, the CI Battalion were resting at Ecaillon, a little village about 8 miles east of Douai. When it became known that the Division was to be part of the Army of Occupation and would have to march everyone realized that it was to be one of longest marches on record. No Batt was ever in better condition to stand the test than the Battalions of the First Division. They marched from Ecaillon to the Rhine in Germany from November 12 to December 11, 1918.
World War 1 ended well over 100 years ago. The War to End all Wars they said. The Great war. As we continue to remember and honour the lives lost during this time of violence we recognize that very few, if any, of the soliders who survived this war are still alive. Despite this fact, their experiences, their stories, fill pages and pages of letters, diaries, postcards, and paybooks. These archive hold words of fear, the realities of violence and death that no one would ever have to know. Experiences these men hoped against hope other would never have because this great war of theirs, and their own sacrifices, would be the beginning and end of wars like this.
Except the war to end all wars didn’t live up to it’s lofty title and humanity didn’t learn from the horror that filled those years. November 11 1918 did bring the deafening silence that came when the noise of war ceased. And for a while after that day, peace was tenuously present as destroyed buildings and lives were slowly rebuilt and an uneasy quiet became the norm.
Until…
Well, we know the story – the world soon finds itself embroiled in another war, one scarier, more violence and more destructive than those involved in WWI could have ever imagined.
We don’t gather together today or on Remembrance day, to uphold the glory of war. We don’t stand in silence as a community and lay wreaths at the foot of statues and gravestones to honour the great acts of war.
This isn’t a celebration. We do all this to remember, to hold ourselves accountable to the promise of no more. We do this because our hearts break each and every time another human being loses their life to the violence of war and greed. We remember because we know that we haven’t mastered peace yet, as the news tells of yet another bomb or shooting or tank destroys a life, a building, a community.
We do this because, as people of faith, we hear the Holy One’s voice in the midst of the violence, keening with pain, calling out with desperation, trying to get it through to the world that this is not what God wants, dreams or desires for the world. God yearns, just as we yearn, for peace. God searches, just as we search, for the hidden moments of hope that keep us seeking peace for the world.
I am 47 years old. War is a “out there, far away” thing that doesn’t directly impact my safety or the way I go about my day. I live a comfortable life with the luxury of safety and freedom. I experience war through the lens of social media, journalists and advocates. That’s as close as I get. And every year, at this time of year, I stand in front of a community of faith and I try, with some sense of authenticity and integrity, to talk about something I have very little direct experience of. Oh, I can tell you how horrible it was, how God doesn’t want God’s people killing each other, about sacrifice for the greater good, and our on going role in peacekeeping around the world. But I cannot tell you how it feels to give all that you are so that a stranger somewhere far away might have a better life. I cannot tell you how it feels to be in the midst of the rubble of a home or community waiting for the next bomb to fall. I cannot tell you about what drives a person to enter a hostile situation in order to honour a country or nation. I cannot tell you how it feels to be given no choice but to fight.
What I can say, is that as I read various letters from soldiers involved in the World Wars, I was struck over and over by the hope hidden between the lines and the words. There in the sharing of the hardships and struggles, in the descriptions of cold, muddy trenches and the ricochet of guns, there were little moments where cracks of light bled hope into what they were doing. It was a hope that what they were doing would indeed make a difference in the world. A hope that they would make it through and to see the end of war. Hope that the world would be a better place, and that all would be well when they got home.
It’s that hope that we carry and hold on to as we mark Remembrance Day. Amid the chaos and mayhem of our world, there still exists that very same hope which was present in the dark of the trenches. The hope for safety, peace, freedom, understand and love. It is the hope that God’s dreams for creation and humanity might find realization.
The dream of our hearts and minds echoes the dream that God holds for the world. As this hope resonates in each beat of our heart, we remember and honour the lives of those who waded into the hard places and continue to wade into them so that the peace so dreamed of might find a foothold in the world. So that one day, we might not need to dream and hope all these things, but actually live these things.
Amen.
