Remembrance Day

Remembrance Day makes you think.
Of all human endeavours, war is the most troubling, and the most paradoxical. We despise the death and destruction that are caused by it; we celebrate the heroism and self-sacrifice that arise out of it.
Pundits often say that the victors get to write the history books, and there is some truth in that. The terrible actions of the Axis powers: the invasion of Poland, the bombardment of civilians in Britain, the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, the Long March, the Holocaust, all are the stuff of countless documentaries, books and films with which Canadians, at least of a certain age, are familiar. The fire bombing of Dresden, Germany, however, in February of 1945 which incinerated an estimated 40,000 civilians in three days, is generally ignored by most citizens of the formerly Allied nations or recorded as a justifiable act by Allied historians, and the atomic bomb attacks on the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which caused the death of 200,000 more, are commonly excused as being "necessary." After all, they started it.
I had four uncles who flew in World War II as either bomber pilots or navigators. All miraculously survived countless sorties over Germany. They flew repeated missions into ground and fighter aircraft fire that tore apart their planes and killed their crew members. Their bravery was extraordinary; none actually expected to live through it. Their superiors told them they were targeting military installations, industrial complexes, and suppliers of the German war machine, not people, not women, not children. They tried to believe it.
I came to Canada 40 years ago from Illinois to avoid fighting in a war started for vague reasons by men with little understanding of the people I was supposed to travel 10,000 miles to kill. I was bothered however by the efficiency of my draft board; I knew that they would fill the quota of Rock Island County draftees that month, with me or without me. There is a song called "Veterans' Day" by Tom Russell. It's about Jimmy McGrew, a soldier missing in action in Viet Nam. The chorus goes: "It's Veterans' Day, and the skies are grey/ Leave your uniforms home 'cause there ain't gonna be a parade/But we'll lift up a glass to the ones who didn't make it through/ And put a light in the window tonight for Jimmy McGrew."
I didn't sleep all that well a week ago Tuesday. At about 1:30 in the morning I got up without waking my wife and put a light in one of our windows, not for a fictitious Jimmy McGrew, but for some guy from Rock Island County whose name I will never know.
Remembrance Day makes you think.