There's a thin line between remembrance and glorification, says Michael Enright
5 of Enright’s uncles fought in the First World War, but he won’t wear a poppy
This is part of a series of columns by Michael Enright, reflecting his more than 50 years as a journalist and CBC broadcaster covering Canadian and global news events.
France, the Western Front, 1916: It had rained all night and most of the day. The trenches were knee-deep in mud. The war was in its third year.
Sgt. Edward Folger, my uncle, was leading his squad back to their camp for some food, and above all, rest. A military vehicle — a scout car roaring along the road to the camp — splashed mud on his men. When they reached camp, Sgt. Folger asked who drove the scout car. Someone pointed to a young lieutenant. Folger walked over to the man and punched him in the face, breaking his nose.
He was court-martialed and reduced to the rank of private. But apparently my uncle was efficient in killing Germans, and by the end of the war in 1918 he was restored to the rank of sergeant. A Globe and Mail report of his death in 1972 said he had survived the first German gas attacks and won the Military Medal, but died in a rooming house of illness and malnutrition.
Folger was one of five uncles who fought in the 1914-1918 war. All told, more than 620,000 Canadians served. That's seven per cent of a population of about eight million at the time.
More than 60,000 Canadians were killed and 172,000 wounded. In the Second World War (1939-1945), 1,159,000 served, of whom 44,090 were killed.
November is the time when we honour the dead of both wars. Across the country, members of the Royal Canadian Legion sell the red poppies to mark the moment when, at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, 1918, the First World War ended.
- CBC News will be marking Remembrance Day on Friday with special coverage from Ottawa, starting at 10 a.m. ET. Find all the details here.
It was called the Great War and the War to End All Wars. As a loyal member of the British Empire, Canada had little choice; she had to fight. Canada declared war on Aug. 14, 1914.
It was a four-year bloodbath that in the end reshaped the continent of Europe. Canada, it was said, came of age as a country in that war.
It was a toxic stew of ignorance, gallantry, cowardice, individual bravery, comradeship and slaughter.
One of my uncles in the Royal Flying Corps was shot down over Holland and spent most of the war as a prisoner. Another, my uncle Charles Folger, was gassed in battle at Ypres in 1915. He returned to Canada, a shaken shell of a man.
There was never any question that the Canadians knew how to fight. As historian Jack Granatstein points out, their speed and bravery earned them a reputation as "shock troops" — effective fighters who would carry out the hardest tasks.
The methodical destruction of human life throughout the war was astonishing. One of the most appalling instances took place outside the village of Beaumont-Hamel in northern France on July 1, 1916 — the first day of the Battle of the Somme.
Some 800 members of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment went into battle that morning. More than 700 were killed or left wounded or missing, including 14 sets of brothers.
A British commander called it a "magnificent display." The assault only failed, he said, "because dead men can advance no further."
After four months of fighting, the British and Canadian troops managed to move the front line 10 kilometres but failed to break the German line. The Germans and Allies each lost nearly 200,000 men.
Which is why every July 1, while most of Canada celebrates Canada Day, across Newfoundland and Labrador it is a day of mourning.
The First World War killed at least nine million soldiers and as many as 13 million civilians.
There is a thin membrane between remembrance and glorification. When we talk about war, we invariably describe our "gallant dead" and those who "fought and died for freedom."
Every city, every little town across the country, has a cenotaph, a pillar of some kind engraved with the names of those who died. Highways are renamed the Highway of Heroes. Bands play, cannons fire, flags fly high.
Carl von Clausewitz, the Prussian philosopher of war, defined it as "an act of violence to compel our opponent to fulfill our will."
In her powerful study War: How Conflict Shaped Us, historian Margaret MacMillan says we make a great mistake if we think of war as a human aberration. She writes: "We do not take war as seriously as we should."
I will slip a toonie or two into the legion member's tin box, but I won't wear a poppy. I never have. It's one thing to remember our war dead; it's quite another to openly acknowledge that memory.
Maybe it's because of the damage the First World War did to members of my family that I refrain from wearing the poppy. Perhaps I could be persuaded to wear a poppy to honour the memory of those 23 Canadian soldiers executed for desertion and cowardice in the 1914-18 war; in a grotesque coda, the men were pardoned in 2006.
Is war inevitable? Is the pursuit of world peace a dream of fools, a fading vision of our hopes?
The odds are that we will always have war with us. As Margaret MacMillan reminds us, "there has been one somewhere every year since 1945."
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