The very thought of Remembrance Day always brings back bad memories for me.
But, perhaps that’s good, because without those very memories, it would be far too easy to forget the absolute horror of what really happened to many of the brave men and women who fought and in many different ways paid a heavy price.
Yes, it is over 100 years ago since the First World War started, but not so long ago that some of us can still remember “Uncle Fred” or someone very like him.
For me, my memories endure, because I grew up with the tragic example and real life experience of a soldier who had been gassed.
Uncle Fred was barely more than a teenager when he fought and became a long-living victim of the Battle of Vimy Ridge.
He’d been a hard-working farm boy with little education, full of life and fight and anxious to serve his country.
But the cost for him was enormous. Never again would he be the man he had been when he put on his uniform for the first time and headed to war.
When he returned, five years later, he was a mere shadow of his former self, frail, angry, confused and at times even dangerous to those who loved and cared for him.
On good days he could work in the fields, and though he could speak, his mind rambled and sometimes it was hard to make sense of his muttering. And besides all of that, there was the physical pain.
On the bad days, without any apparent trigger, he could transform from quiet worker into a belligerent and angry warrior, ready to fight for no reason at all.
At other times he imagined that the enemy was after him, and he’d tremble and curl up in the field in fear.
And with that terrible mixture of bad days and good days, he survived for 40 years thanks to the all-consuming help, love and care of his niece, her husband and family.
A few years ago I was encouraged to read an award-winning book on the First World War, and so I started. But it wasn’t long before the author, in extremely vivid terms, described the horror of how young Canadian soldiers were gassed – and what it did to them, for the rest of their lives.
I stopped and closed the book, never to return to it again, because all I could think of was Uncle Fred.
Life is precious.
War is deadly, even if necessary at times.
But when we get to see, first hand, the real pain of those who fought and suffered, it is a crystal-clear reminder of what can and does happen, and why we should be eternally grateful to those who paid the price for our very freedom that continues through to this day.
