Remembrance Day 2016

Another Remembrance Day and another chance to don uniforms and mix with the commemorations. 

My two friends, Martin and Paul, joined me this year. Paul didn't want to cut off his beard so I said he could be French. This meant I had to cover my new French "bidon" water canteen and make a better set of ammunition pouches to serve the purpose. The rest of the uniform I had for him is rather more theatrical than accurate but looks the part and suited him perfectly. I dressed Martin in my 1916 Canadian leather equipment and seven button tunic. He was of the 21st Battalion. This year I decided to revert to my P'08 Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry equipment and wore a steel helmet for the first time since 2013. We made a fine looking trio before walking down to the Cross of Sacrifice.

And then later on the 21st Battalion monument: 

At the ceremony we were joined by Ada, a history student at Queen's, in a nurses dress uniform from the Museum of Healthcare.

As always on these days we elicited much interest and reflection from the people we met and who came up to talk with us. I am always surprised at how touched people are that we should be there. Everyone has a memory of a parent, a great grandparent, or a great uncle who fought in the war. One woman said I reminded her of her grandfather who fought "in all the bad places". Later, at the pub, we were mobbed for photographs. At the end of our meal it turned out that some military person, who had left half an hour earlier, had paid our bill for us. There is clearly a deep and profound undercurrent of memory in so many people on this day. The evocative power of reproduction uniforms can bring forth those thoughts for each individual person's own reflection.

Looking at old photographs one must always think of the tragedy and waste of so many lives. Yet in the faces of those from one hundred years ago there is an undeniable sense of giddiness, a look strangely at odds with the grim reality of what was happening. Remembrance Day is a very somber day, apparently vital for our sense of connectedness to other humans. Yesterday I also witnessed some of that giddiness. But that, too, is important and keeps us together.