Remember

Nov. 10th, 2011 06:39 am
amphigoury: (Kameraden)
[personal profile] amphigoury

I would like on this week of weeks, on this day of days when men and women gather, and their children too, at the cenotaphs and in the gymnasiums, in the classrooms and the office towers, and watch in silence as the stiff old soldiers are wheeled past—and the young ones too, marching by, their pipes and drums filled with the seriousness of purpose, the certainty of deeds.  I would like in this week, on this day, as we stand in silence and watch the parades and the wind-whipped flags, the snap of bugles and gunshots, the sudden flight of birds below a grey sky—I would like, while we are speaking of remembrance, to say a few words about memory myself.


It was an Australian journalist working in London who thought we should do this. He was, or so I'm told, distressed by the way men and women danced on Armistice Day—all the young boys kissing all the young girls right in the street! He wrote a letter to the evening news: "Wouldn't silence be more appropriate than dancing?" he wrote. And so, ninety noisy years later we stand, little pilgrims of sadness, separated from the dancing boys and girls by the years of regret.



"History," wrote Charles Warner, "is nothing but ... regret." Though not the regret of war, it's clear. Nor of the young soldiers face down in the mud. Nor of the bewildered refugees, those orphans of war, with their ragged suitcases and their smudged eyes. Oh no, it's not war we regret. It's a regret even deeper than war. A regret that echoes in our memories like a piece of bone tossed down a well, the bone rattling off the stones all the way to the bottom to where regret is waiting. We stand in our silence with regret by our side, and it is not the regret of war: it is the regret that "everything might have turned out so differently."



World War I was my grandfather's war. The armistice which we remember this week was signed in the darkness before dawn, 5:30 in the morning in a railway car on a railway siding hidden in the French woods, as if peace was only something you spoke of at night.



As if peace was something secret.



The only story I know of my grandfather's war is the day when the war was over, that he flew his little plane under London Bridge—which sounds like dancing girls and boys to me... 



World War II was my father's war, and though he fought in North Africa, and New Guinea, and Crete and Yugoslavia, and was awarded the OBE when the war was over, he's not talking either. 



So at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, when I stand at the wall of regret in my silence, and the bugles play, and the old, sad soldiers cross the stage, the memory that takes its solemn bow is not my memory. It is the memory of something I have never known. And when I try and look deep into the mirror of my mind and summon the memories up—for they must be there, locked in my DNA, son of soldiers that I am: a wisp of smoke, perhaps. The rattle of gunfire. The gunmetal-sour taste of fear. When I try to touch the many; when I try to grasp all of it, or more of it, or even some of it, I always end up with none of it. Standing there by my sorry little self, knee-deep in the troubled waters of our troubled times holding my little fishing net, which I have thrown out over the waters so many times and pulled back just as many times empty. For memory, as they say, is nothing but a net full of holes. 



I can tell you nothing about history. Writ large or writ small, I know nothing about smoke and fire, heroes or cowards, the rains of Passchendale, mustard gas, percussion bombs, whizz-bangs, the flare of a match, beginnings and endings. I have never known war. Not my grandfather's. Not my father's. Not any of the wars we have fought or are still fighting today, God save us. But I can tell you this—this one sad thing. I can tell you the story of Pvt. George Lawrence Price, a story I read in a book and have never forgotten.



Pvt. Price was the son of James and Annie Price of Port Williams, Nova Scotia—the sweetest little sea-side village, I'm told, where the sun shines warm in summer and the wind blows the clean, sea air over the dunes. A perfect place for a boy to kiss a girl. George was conscripted into the army when he was twenty-four years old. And who knows if he'd kissed a girl when he left for war. Who knows who was left walking the beach of memory waiting for him to return.



He almost made it, safe and sound.



But on the eleventh of November, in 1918—exactly ninety years ago this week—George, in Belgium, on patrol, advancing on the village of Havré, and when he and his friends crossed the Canal du Centre, they came under fire. There was someone or somebody shooting at them from a row of houses. They went into the house they thought the shooting was coming from, and they found the gunners—whoever they were—had gone out the back door. So they went into the next house and found the same thing. And it was when he stepped out of this house—the second house—that George Lawrence was shot in the chest. When the bullet crashed into him it was 10:58 a.m. Two minutes before the Armistice that had been signed in that railway car that very morning took effect. George Lawrence of Port Williams, Nova Scotia was the last soldier killed in World War I. He died with two minutes left in the game—in the War to End All Wars.



And George Lawrence is who I'm going to remember this week. George Lawrence is who I have been thinking about, while sitting alone in my house watching the television news, the windows shuttered, the doors locked, safe and sound against the darkness of the night, the wind, the rain, and the scraping and the sniffing and faraway yapping of the dogs of war, roaming still today as they roamed ninety years ago, snapping at the countryside of our minds.



Here's to George Lawrence Price: twenty-five years old and ninety years dead. Alone in his cold and silent grave in St. Symphorien.



I remember.



We remember.



And as we stand for our two minutes of silence, we will remember you yet and beg your forgiveness.



We have tried, but we haven't tried hard enough. We have been busy with other business, though I can't, for the life of me, remember what it was.



We are sorry.



Please forgive us.



Have mercy upon our souls.



-Stuart McLean, The Vinyl Cafe, CBC radio, 2008


Audio file here - have a listen

This account has disabled anonymous posting.
If you don't have an account you can create one now.
HTML doesn't work in the subject.
More info about formatting

Profile

amphigoury: (Default)
amphigoury

December 2020

S M T W T F S
  12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728 29 3031  

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 22nd, 2025 08:57 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios