The Day of Peace in Flanders Fields

"The Day of Peace in Flanders Fields" - a reading (on YouTube)

Ninety-one years ago, at the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the Western allies signed an agreement to cease hostilities with Germany, putting an end for us to the Great War. Around Europe and parts of North America today is marked as Armistice Day or Remembrance Day. Independence Day for some, Veterans Day for us. The following year, we signed a treaty formalizing the end of the War to End All Wars.

Or so we thought until we finished off a two-front war twenty-six years later that saw more civilian deaths than military and whose carnage was four times greater than its predecessor. This time around we decided not to tell ourselves quaint lies about the future as the ashes and rubble cooled and settled into a Cold War between erstwhile allies. This time we didn't feel the same need to remember so much as some of us felt the need to never forget.

Thirty-eight years after that war ended, I met a former Marine in a hobby shop who had fought as a young man on all the islands that still ring through our country's collective memory, Tarawa, Peleliu, Iwo Jima, Okinawa. For decades, he had been unable to share or even understand his experiences. He never told anyone what he had seen, including his wife and children. He suffered nightmares and anxiety attacks.

Then, he met a group of veterans who reenacted the battles he had fought with miniatures. Suddenly, he was able to understand the reason his friends had died here or there, and why his commander had insisted they advance to take this or that position against seemingly impossible odds. He could see the battle from a higher angle, one reserved at the time for men with stars on their collars not stripes on their sleeves. He understood why the sacrifices of the men around him were necessary, men he'd lived with, talked with, eaten with, gotten to know, many to like. He could see the lives of other men in other units that his unit was saving through their actions and loss.

His anxiety eased, his nightmares went away. He found he could talk with others about what he had seen and been through, even non-military people, even strangers like myself, at the time a young man perhaps a few years older than he had been when he was sent away to fight. After decades of silent suffering, he had found a measure of peace through comprehension.

War changes every man and woman who survives it, directly or indirectly. While I am unlikely to become a member of that fraternity, someone did try to kill me once with their hands, up close and very personal. That experience changes the way you see the world from that day forward. It is not an experience you easily forget.

We tend forget that the objective of any war is peace, as lasting and sustainable as humanly possible. War should always be a last resort and kept as short as possible. There is nothing inherently glorious in weapons, nothing to be celebrated in taking another's life, no matter how justified, no matter how necessary. To paraphrase Lao Tzu, we should enter battle gravely and treat even victory like a funeral.

In my family, funerals involve either praying or drinking, usually one or the other to exclusion. I was never very good at either but more tolerable at the latter. So to any veteran reading this, I raise a sober glass in acknowledgement and remembrance of your service with a fervent hope that your experience only changed you for the better. To those still in uniform, if you cannot be safe, be well on this and every day. May you and all of us celebrate another day of peace sometime in the near future. The Day of Peace in Flanders Fields.


© 2009 Edward P. Morgan III