War dashes dreams

National Post, 13 November 2021

War sees to it that many of the young do not grow old. For those who do, war makes it hard to dream again.

For many years now when visiting downtown Ottawa in the evening, I have kept the custom of stopping by the cenotaph if possible.

At night the cenotaph is more imposing. There are few people, if any. It is a suitable setting for reflection upon the fallen commemorated and the country for which they fell. Especially since the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was placed there in 2000, it is a good place to pray for the dead.

This year was the first time I have visited the cenotaph on Remembrance Day itself. I was in Ottawa for the evening and so made my customary visit. It was late, twelve hours since the moment of silence in the morning; but the late hour provided its own silence.

I could have done without the wafting aroma of marijuana in the crisp air, but that too, apparently, is now among the freedoms for which our soldiers died. It would have been better, I think, for an honour guard to be there for the entirety of Remembrance Day, but there was no one on hand.

The words of the morning service at my parish in Wolfe Island still resonated in my ears. I find the Ode of Remembrance, brief as it is, one of the most moving parts of Remembrance Day. The words are from the fourth stanza of Binyon’s For the Fallen :

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old/

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn./

At the going down of the sun and in the morning/

We will remember them.

Perhaps nighttime is the best time to honour the fallen. The psalm verse that no doubt inspired Binyon reads “from the rising of the sun unto the going down of the same the Lord’s name is to be praised” (Psalm 113:3).

All the day long, as the light shines, the Lord is to be praised. Night — “at the going down of the sun and in the morning” — evokes the realm of death, a time to remember the lost and the fallen.

Even though we gather for Remembrance Day in the morning, the solemn silence of the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month is set between sunset and sunrise as it were, with the Last Post beginning the silence and Reveille concluding the two minutes. Night has fallen and we remember the dead.

Reveille is the morning melody, but there is no more morning from those who no longer grow old. For them Reveille calls them not to another day of duty on the battlefield, but to life upon “another shore and in a greater light” as they pray at King’s College, Cambridge.

At the Ottawa cenotaph, atop the allegorical figures of liberty and peace is a torch — perhaps John McCrae’s torch from (itals)  In Flanders Fields (itals). Torches are intended for nighttime, a sign in the darkness of that greater light which will return.

Continue reading at the National Post.