Rezori | Remembering again

The morning of Remembrance Day this Wednesday past was so still, you could almost hear the trees up and down the street switch off their leaves and let them drift to the ground.

The usual hard drone of the city had subsided to a murmur. Every now and then the sound of a lone passing car swelled and faded. Two dogs, amplified by silence, barked at each other across the neighbourhood.

Just the kind of day on which the dead sleep peacefully.

Yet not for long, because on the eleventh hour, as is Remembrance Day custom, the bugle called everybody to their post at the nearest war memorial the veterans who could still make it, their relatives and friends, citizens still moved by rites of remembrance, the dead as well, plus their melancholic whispers.

Bands marched all over the land, dignitaries spoke, pledges of remembrance were made, guns went off, smoke billowed and drifted, pipes wailed, wreaths piled up.

The spectre of war rose once more like a two-headed creature, valour on one face, futility on the other.

So what is it, this thing called war?

It feels so good in times of peace. We remember the dead with open hearts, feel for them and with them, forgive who they were and only count what they did, which was to lay down their lives so the world is a safer place for the rest of us.

They bring us together in gratitude and humility, remind us to love, to push aside hate, and above all to be brave and free.

They make us communicate in the precious language of symbols: the poppy in Canada, the forget-me-not in traditional Newfoundland and Labrador, the cornflower in France, rosemary in Australia.

If, as the British have done these last few years, we squabble over the appropriate use of those symbols, it's harmless stuff compared to the real thing.

Because the real thing is nothing like the poppies, the forget-me-nots, or the cornflowers.

War on the ground is not just fighting the other side, it's fighting on your own side as well.

A calculated gamble with insanity

As military historian Richard Gabriel states in his book No More Heroes, "In every war in which American soldiers have fought, the chances of becoming a psychiatric casualty ... were greater than the chances of being killed by enemy fire."

Never mind the true-grit glory of the advance into the teeth of death, the medals for valour, and the hero worship afterwards. War is a calculated gamble with insanity.

Yet in mankind's long and bloody journey from savagery to utopia, it's still far too often justified as a necessary means to progress.

Seven hundred years ago, Genghis Khan unleashed a series of wars and conquests across Asia that demolished every small autonomous civilization in his way and claimed an estimated 40-million lives.

The outcome was a wide trade corridor between East and West ... one that later helped usher in the Renaissance.

The First World War can be seen in the same light. It swept out the old Europe for the benefit of a new one; it also opened the door for the emancipation of women.

Time and again, war has been used to end political, social, or economic stagnation; time and again, it's been the preferred resort long before it could be justified as the last. Time and again, it's created the necessities that have mothered thousands of inventions without which our modern lives would be unthinkable.

All through my learning years, I was taught that war, not peace, has been the real shaper of history. It was the common theme of the folk tales I grew up with, the mythologies that followed, the battles and their dates I had to memorize in history class. Even love, we were assured, has its wars.

Heroes were heroes because they were not afraid to slay their foes. Saints were saints, not heroes.

Was all of that wrong?

There's a time for everything

According to one account, there have been 14,500 wars in 5,500 years of recorded human history.

The total death toll has been estimated at 3.5-billion.

The years without war amount to less than 10 per cent of all that time.

Sixteen wars or war-like conflicts made the list last year nine in Africa, six in the Middle East, one each in Asia and Central America.

All around the globe, governments have renamed their war ministries and now call them ministries of defence and the fighting continues.

Unlike humans, who must ponder regardless of whether they want to, the leaves that rained down silently all over the city on the morning of last week's Remembrance Day followed a simpler program.

It goes something like this: There's a time for everything a time to hold on, and a time to let go.

No bugles necessary, no speeches, no pledges, no regrets.