TRAVIS WEAGANT
<Co-Editor-in-Chief>
Thomas, a friend of mine, once told me a story about his grandmother and Remembrance Day. Remembrance Day was first observed in the inter-war period in Great Britain. November 11th, Armistice Day, seemed a fitting day to commemorate the vast human tragedy of the Great War, and is a reminder that even the worst kind of brutal fighting can come to an end, even if it does so several years too late.
Thomas’ grandmother, Ella Wilkins, graduated from business college in Montreal. She went to her local cenotaph on Armistice Day 1941, when she was 24. On that very day, she joined the Royal Canadian Air Force Women’s Division as a medical stenographer, transcribing the observations of doctors as they treated wounded soldiers. She served at Rockcliffe Air Base in Ottawa for the duration of the war. After she returned home to Fredericton in 1945, she never attended another Remembrance Day ceremony. This is why.
On April 25, 1915, the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) landed at Gallipoli, as part of an offensive to knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war. It didn’t work. The Ottoman forces, commanded by Mustafa Kemal himself, resisted the attack. Over the following months, the campaign claimed the lives of more than 10 000 Australians and New Zealanders. Over 61 000 Australians and 16 000 New Zealanders were killed in the war.
On July 1, 1916, 800 men of the Newfoundland Regiment went “over the top” at Beaumont-Hamel in the first offensive of the Battle of the Somme. Facing an entrenched enemy that knew the attack was coming, less than 100 of them escaped death or wounds. This day is still the bloodiest day in the history of the British Army, with over 19 000 men losing their lives before noon. Every corner of the Empire suffered loss that day, but Newfoundland felt the tragedy acutely, being a colony of less than 250 000 people. Between 1914 and 1918, war killed more than 1000 Newfoundlanders and over 885 000 British.
On March 10, 1915, 20 000 Indian troops attacked German positions at Neuve Chapelle. Performing admirably and recapturing 2 km of lost ground, India nonetheless felt the brutality of war. Today, a memorial stands at Neuve Chapelle, where two stone tigers stand watch over the names of 4 200 of India’s missing. Over 74 000 Indian soldiers died in the war.
On February 21, 1916, the German Army attacked French forces at Verdun. The French forces stubbornly refused to give it up. General Joffre devised a system wherein a division fighting at Verdun would be replaced when one third of its men became casualties. Under this system, 75 percent of the French Army served at Verdun during the nine-month battle. Over 350 000 of them died. More than 335 000 Germans also died in the assault. France suffered more than one million deaths as a result of the war, and Germany more than two million.
On August 26, 1914, Russian forces attacked German positions near Allenstein, in East Prussia. Over the next four days, the offensive turned into a spectacular failure and saw the deaths of 78 000 Russian soldiers. The progressive collapse of the Russian economy, military leadership, and, eventually, the state itself had dire consequences. More than two million Russians died or went missing during the war. Following a bloody civil conflict and revolution, the Soviet Union went to war again. The Second World War carried a cost of approximately 24 million military deaths, over one third of which were Russian. Scholars estimate that between armed conflict and crimes against humanity, over 13 percent of the Russian population died during the Second World War.
On April 6, 1917, the United States declared war on Germany. By spring 1918, 10 000 American troops were arriving in France every single day. The inexperienced American troops suffered high casualty rates, and in less than a year of fighting more than 116 000 American soldiers died.
These statistics unavoidably overwhelm. The raw figures on death in both world wars are simply too large to grasp beyond a vague understanding that they are tragic. To truly understand them, you require perspective. This is simple enough: add the 10 million military deaths from the Great War to the 24 million of its successor and you get a figure just slightly larger than 33 476 688, which was Canada’s population as of the 2011 Census. Add non-military deaths as a result of war and crimes against humanity; this more than doubles that figure, even by conservative estimates. That’s approximately equal to the entire population of France. For now, we couldn’t forget this loss of life if we tried, but, as time goes by, we cannot ever afford to forget.
There is more to remembrance than just November 11. In the United Kingdom, Remembrance Sunday is the closest Sunday to the 11th, making the British day of remembrance different every year. In Australia and New Zealand, residents wear poppies on Armistice Day, just as they do in Canada and the UK. Poppies grow naturally in soil that has been recently turned, meaning that they persisted on the graves of fallen soldiers in Flanders. Canadian John McCrae’s description of this phenomenon in his poem “In Flanders Fields” reverberated throughout the British Empire after the war, and made the poppy a worldwide symbol of remembrance. However, these traditions are not universal.
The major day of remembrance in Australia and New Zealand is April 25 – ANZAC Day – and residents wear a rosemary sprig, an Australian national symbol. The French observe separate memorial days for both world wars, but in November they wear the bleuet (cornflower) to commemorate those that died on the Chemin des Dames, where the flower grows, in a battle in 1917. In the United States, Memorial Day is the last Monday in May, a tradition dating back to the Civil War. In Russia, the dead are remembered on May 9.
In Newfoundland, which was an independent dominion separate from Canada during both World Wars, July 1 is Memorial Day. This stands in stark contrast to the importance of July 1 for the rest of Canada. If you attend a ceremony on July 1 in Newfoundland, you will surely notice that attendees are not wearing poppies. They are wearing forget-me-nots, which grow naturally both in Newfoundland and upon the banks of the Ancre near Beaumont-Hamel. The forget-me-not symbolizes the eternal connection between these two places.
Beyond even these myriad observances of remembrance, someone, somewhere, is remembering those who died in war every minute of every day of the year. They do not do so to glorify the brutality and tragedy of armed conflict, nor do they mean to foster hatred of our former military adversaries. They do so because war has impacted their country, society, and family. While soldiers’ bravery and sacrifice are important as matters of national and familial pride, the senseless theft of their innocence and life is universally important, and must not be forgotten on any day of the year.
Ella Wilkins spent her time in the military surrounded by the consequences of combat. When her family finally asked her why she did not observe Remembrance Day, she responded: “I don’t need a day to remember; I never forgot.”