Saturday, November 11, 2006

Remembrance - Poppies / Matilda

This morning I read a good discussion of the poem In Flanders Fields at the Tyee Web site. That web site is a good independent voice of news in BC. The article does a good job of putting this all just so Canadian an icon in perspective.
 The photo on the left shows my maternal grandfather John Gibson in his WWI sergeant's uniform of the York and Simcoe Foresters. (Actually the York part of this name is a bit of a puzzle. On his attestation papers the stamp says that he joined the Y & S Foresters Construction. I read somewhere that was York and Simcoe but can't find any such reference on the web. There was a 35th Regiment (Simcoe Foresters) which is probably the same thing.
 John Gibson joined just in time for the autumn campaign in Flanders and northern France). He survived and lived for many years after the war. The picture on the right shows Bert Belcher who would have been my mother's uncle if he had survived the war. He joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force in October 1915 but never made it out of Canada. He was buried in Saskatoon in 1916.
 In some ways the world is still feeling the effects of those battles. The battles in Turkey and the empire partitions in the Middle East were direct contributions to the current turmoil in that area. The Balkanization of the Balkans took hold during the Great War. And the repatriations imposed by the Treaty of Versailles were direct causes of Germany's need to regain power in WWII.
 At that same Tyee web page I found a reference to the moving song by Eric Bogle named The Band Played Waltzing Matilda. Even with all my time in Australia I had missed that one. The lyrics are quite moving. WWI was known as the war to end all wars but it ended little. Yes, I do believe in peace but the world is a tough place and sometimes we have to stand up for what we believe in.