At the going down of the sun

Not being a morning person, I rarely see the sun rise, but my soul delights when I walk by the sea, at sunset. As a myriad of colours streak the sky and the setting sun casts its light across the water I am reminded of words from the poem ForThe Fallen: 

They shall not grow 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.

The poem was written by British poet and scholar, Laurence Binyon in 1914 on the Western Front, as he tended the soldiers who sacrificed their lives to the war to end all wars. Although written for World War 1, the words have become synonymous with all war casualties.

Last week we celebrated the 100th anniversary of the landing at Anzac Cove in Gallipoli, a disastrous campaign that claimed the lives of thousands of Australian, New Zealand and British soldiers.  On that day last week I combined two loves, the ocean and music, and as I walked I listened to the beautiful song Requiem for a Soldier, on my iPod. The theme of sacrifice surfaced with the poignant words:

In fields of sacrifice, 

Heroes paid the price, 

Young men who died for old men’s wars, 

Gone to paradise.

As I walked I reflected on the sacrifice of those innocent young men who fell in the cause of the free on foreign soil. Amid the great public enthusiasm with which the outbreak of war was received, they left their homes and families – some, mere children, with a sense of adventure and the fear that the war would be over before they got there; others who believed they were going to serve a greater cause. Sixty-thousand of them never returned to the land they loved. Thousands more, including my own grandfather, did return, but were forever changed by their injuries and memories.

The purpose of this Blog is to focus on the good and the beautiful but on this lovely autumn day, my thoughts focussed on the question: could these qualities be found on the battlefields of Gallipoli; in the Somme offensive; at Fromelles, with more than 5,000 casualties in 24 hours; or the battle of Passchendaele at Ypres? Where was the beauty in the mud of the trenches, or in the loss of brothers and friends?

Yet it was in those very trenches that friendships formed and ‘mateship’ sustained them. Bill Gammage, in his study of ANZAC soldiers in The Broken Years noted that a third of those he surveyed said, ‘the experience of mateship was incomparable’.

The tradition of using red poppies to commemorate Armistice Day on November 11, arose from the devastated battlefields of northern France and Belgium. Canadian medical officer, Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, was so moved by the sight of poppies springing up on the battlefield at Ypres in 1915, that he wrote the poem In Flanders Fields:  ‘In Flanders fields the poppies blow between the crosses row on row, that mark our place: and in the sky the larks, still bravely singing, fly, scarce heard amid the guns below’. His words inspired American YMCA secretary Moina Michael to begin wearing a red poppy as a way of keeping faith with McCrae’s poetic urging. Her action in turn inspired Anna Guérin, French YMCA secretary, to begin selling poppies to raise money for widows, orphans, and needy veterans and their families. Australian artist Kenneth MacQueen served on the Western Front in 1917-18 and his beautiful watercolour Wild Poppies, Mont Kemmel c. 1917-1918 hangs in the Australian War Memorial, another reminder that beauty cannot be subdued.

Over 3000 Australian civilian nurses volunteered for WWI active service. They served in Egypt, France, Greece, and India. They worked on hospital ships and trains, in gruelling conditions and often close to the front, where they were exposed to shelling and aerial bombardment. One of them, Sister Claire Trestrail wrote, ‘No words can describe the awfulness of the wounds’, yet these brave and compassionate women worked on –  twenty-five of them dying during their service.

The question I asked as I began my walk was answered. There was beauty in that terrible war: the soldiers noticed it in ‘mateship’; MacCrae and MacQueen noticed it in the poppies of Flanders Field and Mont Kemmel; Moina Michael noticed it in the evocative imagery of In Flanders Field; it shone out of the nurses and their compassion and devotion to the wounded; and above all it was found in the resilience of the human spirit.

I was consoled by these reflections and the knowledge that the sacrifice of those brave young men and women is remembered from generation to generation at the going down of the sun and in the morning.