Tomorrow morning I will put on my uniform and pin on the medals a grateful nation has given me for doing nothing that was even remotely brave or difficult. Then I will walk to the Cenotaph in downtown Ottawa and attend the Remembrance Day ceremony.

I do this every year because I consider it a sacred duty. I am almost embarassed to wear my medals I received for serving in Germany, Bosnia and Haiti when I compare them to the medals that other men earned at Vimy Ridge or Ortona or Juno Beach or during the liberation of Holland. However, I wear my medals anyway to show respect.

It is because remembrance is a sacred duty that I have real misgivings about mixing it with patriotism. Essays like the one quoted above contain a lot of truth, but they also leave an unpleasant taste in my mouth when the author wraps himself in the flag:

"He is a soldier and a savior and a sword against the darkness, and he is nothing more than the finest, greatest testimony on behalf of the finest, greatest nation ever known."

This kind of bombastic patriotism bothers me a great deal. It seems cheap and tacky when applied to the duty of honouring those who have served in war. It is also insulting to soldiers who suffered as much and worked as hard and died in the service of other countries. Did they give up their youth or their health or their lives on behalf of countries that were only reasonably great, the also rans of history?

To my mind, the example set by those who have fought for their country demands humility, the kind that Abraham Lincoln showed at Gettysburg, or that Laurence Binyon exemplified in the lines that are read at every Remembrance Day service in Canada:

"They shall grow not old as we that are left grow old
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them."

Edmund

(P.S. As a matter of interest, is there anybody else on Mudcat who is still serving?)