Remembering the 21st Battalion, John McCrae, and PPCLI

The commemorations, for which I have been working so much and creating these past blog postings,  have come and gone.

I feel like a bride's mother who has been preparing for a wedding for months, then suddenly the wedding happens and it's all over. Time passes and everything ends. Does the bride's mother think "what was this all about"? Wasn't time supposed to stop in a perpetual and universal moment of recognition?

A group of us in uniform spent the Saturday of May 2 handing out brochures about the official commemoration to take place on the Tuesday. That day, the 5th, we marched in slight confusion with the smart and capable Regiment for whom this whole commemoration was organized. ( Princess of Wales' Own Regiment ). Like a wedding it was gone in the moment without even confetti to sweep up.

But, it was our moment with all its foibles. It was our time to experience thoughts and ideas and to reflect on things which would otherwise have been forgotten. 

One of our group did some busking, singing songs from the 1900s. He later met an old, old, man hobbling up the street with a walker. He told him of the centenary we were commemorating. The old man remembered stories of his father leaving on that very day from Kingston. Tears welled in his eyes. We had done something right.

Similarly, on May 3, I was at a centenary commemoration of the writing of John McCrea's poem "In Flanders Fields". I had presumed it would be an event that all of Canada would attend. I was very much mistaken since the only public there were people with some sort of deep connection to the poet, and otherwise it was a moment of regimental recognition with lots of military columns.

May 8 was the hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Friesenberg. My grandfather fought with PPCLI in November 1915, so he was not a part of that battle which tested the regiment to the full. He always had a print the famous painting of the battle in his office, and I now have that painting myself. Yesterday I let my thoughts pass over the idea of that battle in respect for my grandfather's feelings. I don't think that was any less a commemoration for not having grand and perfect fanfares and marching regiments.