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A recreation of The Cenotaph, the monument built originally to honor the British and Empire dead of World War I, here in London City.  (Some items on the wall are derendered for the photo.)

This year, November 11 will be extra notable in many countries.  It will have been one hundred years since November 11, 1918, the day that saw an armistice go into effect at 11:00 a.m. between the warring countries, ending fighting in what we now call the First World War.  Most people of the time hoped it would truly be the last major war, the “war to end war,” as it was phrased.  Sadly, as R. F. Delderfield suggested in To Serve Them All My Days, they had merely blown half-time.  It took only twenty years, along with a punitive peace treaty, governments using its terms to exact vengeance on Germany, and the general world economic collapse of the Great Depression (combined with the massive financial mistakes of the German government during and after the war), to open the path for the instigators of the next great war ….

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Harper put up an excellent pair of pieces for her Veterans Day writing this week, but I decided to do something of my own.  In Canada, we call this Remembrance Day, and it’s more specifically to honour the soldiers and sailors who have fallen, like America’s Memorial Day, since the day’s origin lies in the end of what was then called the Great War, now World War I.  The Flanders poppy in my lapel derives from the poppies that dotted the northern European landscape, thus the inspiration for Canadian army doctor John McCrae’s “In Flanders Fields.”

Je me souviens….

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The wearing of a Flanders poppy on November 11 is not the fashion in the United States, though it still is in the countries and former dominions of the British Commonwealth.  Here, you see me beside a recreation of the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior, set here in Knightsbridge Region.  I feel it’s the appropriate thing, though, and so I have one on my lapel as I make my rounds today.

In Flanders fields, the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place;wait and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead, short days ago,

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved, and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields!…

Lt. Col. John McCrae, Canadian Army Medical Corps