The Written Word
for November 14, 1999

I have just returned from Church … the service was Remembrance Day … and I wept for much of it. I wept through the junior choir singing "In Flanders Fields", I wept during "O God Our Help in Ages Past" and especially through "Eternal Father Strong to Save". There were tears in my eyes as the kids acted out the songs and orations of war and peace and somehow the recessional hymn (which the Anglican Hymn book rather uncharitably calls an old American Campground Hymn but is really the Battle Hymn of the Republic) really got the tear glands working overtime.

Why this emotional reaction from a man who was a kid of 7 ½ when the Second World War began and not yet 14 when it ended?

Part of the explanation was the pure raw emotion of the words we heard and the songs we sang. People much younger than I – my wife Wendy for example – were also crying their eyes out.

Part of it is my interest in history and especially my lifelong study of and admiration for Winston Churchill and, to a lesser extent, Franklin Roosevelt. The words of theirs we now hear on Remembrance Days I heard live. I well remember Churchill’s "Give us the tools and we will finish the job" speech and his "some chicken … some neck" speech given to our House of Commons and I remember listening with my parents to Roosevelt’s "fireside chats".

But a great part I think is because, though of tender years, I was by 1943 part of the system. It was that year I was conscripted into the Army cadets at St Georges School and it didn’t take a genius to draw a straight line between carrying that heavy Cooey rifle on your soldiers to the mud of Italy. In fact this straight line was constantly emphasized to you – young men you had known in school came back in their uniforms to inspire you. Church services of remembrance were held for fallen students only a few years your senior – students you had hero worshipped on the rugby field had their names on the board in the Gym where all servicemen from the school were recorded.

The way we were taught had us earmarked for war. We were given considerable doses of Kipling, Sir Henry Newbolt ("play up, play, and play the game") and the sagas of Henty. By the time 1944 had rolled around I was also in the Sea Cadets – I wanted to go into the Navy. By that time those of my age were all conditioned if somewhat immature combatants. We had done our basic training.

We saw not only older schoolmates get wounded and die, we saw the dads of our contemporaries wounded or die in action. And though it seemed quite frequent, perhaps one or two times a year we had special memorial services for the fallen of our "old boys" and our relatives. In the summer of 1944 my cousin, and best friend, lost his dad in Italy … he was my uncle Howard. In 1943 I had already lost my boyhood hero, Bud O’Hara, to a Messerchmidt’s cannons. Then when Roosevelt died I saw the face of the most severe "master" we had with tears running down his face, his mask of severity turned into one of uncontrollable grief. And I remember the day it ended in Europe and we all went into Chapel and sang "O God Our Help In Ages Past" and "Abide With Me."

I cried for the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" today because that was so big a part of Churchill’s funeral and Churchill was the man we all revered when I was the age of the youngsters who put on the Remembrance Day Pageant I witnessed this morning.

I grieved and cried today, then, in large part because though I was not a veteran of World War II, I was in the "system".

It’s comforting to know that there is no system for 12 and 13 years olds any more … but as I took part in this very special service at St Christopher’s today I wondered whether this meant we’re just kidding ourselves.

Then I prayed that we weren’t.