Too easy to forget

The mud, blood and filth of Passchendaele in 1917

"...I died in Hell(they called it Passchendaele)

my wound was slightand I was hobbling back;

and then a shellburst slick upon the duckboards;

so I fellinto the bottomless mud, and lost the light"

. . . Siegfried Sassoon

Almost exactly a year ago we rolled into the railway station in Lille, France, to change trains so we could continue on our way to Brussels. As we pulled away from the station the pastoral beauty of the peaceful and bucolic countryside struck me.

Ironically, this journey took place on November 12th. That is the day after November 11th, which isn’t a silly statement at all, because November 11th is in Canada and the Commonwealth, Remembrance Day. I believe it is called Veterans’ Day in the US. Names don’t matter, but events do.

What I found almost unforgivable in myself was that as I was luxuriating in the comfort of our sleek Eurostar train – the same one that whisks passengers to London via the Chunnel, or Paris, if you’re going the other way – is that I was on charged ground. For, just a few miles to the north of this farm country, in the direction of Calais, lay the etched forever in time, horrors of Passchendaele. Passchendaele which, in a scant four months in 1917 in order to gain two paltry kilometres of German held turf half a million Commonwealth soldiers died. Of those 500,000, 17,000 were Canadian boys. Indeed, in the first day of Canadian involvement, 2,500 kids from Vancouver, Toronto, and Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan paid with their lives.

So, here I am, sitting in a sleek train, enjoying my European tour, and I’m not cognizant of an earlier trip to the same bit of sod. I have a degree in European history. I chastise myself for my obliviousness.

Over the years I have written innumerable pieces on Remembrance Day and its meaning. When I began as a journalist, in the late 1970s, there remained a goodly number of World War One vets in our town. They’re all gone, and the numbers from World War Two, and even Korea are diminishing. “Gone off to join their comrades,” the old vets are fond of saying.

There is, of course, a certain falsehood in my writing such musings (one is in our local paper today, and it concerns a young man who died at the aforementioned Passchendaele – he was 19) and that is based on the fact that I, blessedly, have never been in combat.

I am happy I have never been in combat, but I can’t help wondering what it must be like. I can’t help wondering about the guys who hit the beach at Normandy in 1944 knowing their life expectancy was maybe 15-minutes, or less. How do you resolve that in your fear-ridden mind? Do you just say, “Oh, what the fuck – let’s go?” Or do you live on the expectation that you will be one of the charmed, one of the survivors? After all, despite the immoral toll on young lives, more survived than didn’t. Survived after a fashion, at least.

Today we have young men and women in Afghanistan. Young men and women in Iraq. Some of them won’t be coming back.

Spare them a thought on November 11th.