The Rich and the Dead

This post has been almost a year in the making. 

I have cooked it and cooked it and cooked it, not knowing how to start it or how to end it. 

A year or so ago began a very public series of suicides of Canadian veterans:

November 25, 2013:  Master Bombadier Travis Halmrast

November 26, 2013:  Master Cpl. William Elliot

November 27, 2013:  Warrant Officer Michael Robert McNeil

December 3, 2013:  Master Cpl. Sylvian Lelievre

December 25, 2013:  Retired Cpl. Leona MacEachern

January 3, 2014:  Cpl. Adam Eckhardt

January 8, 2014:  Cpl. Camilo Sanhueza-Martinez

January 16, 2014:  Lt.-Col. Stephane Beauchemin

(Related but not a suicide:)

March – Romeo Dallaire crashed into a traffic barrier on Parliament Hill after falling asleep at the wheel.

Day after day, it seemed, during the darkest days of 2013 and 2014, former soldier after former soldier took their own lives. Over and over and over.

Reports of the Veteran’s Affairs ministry came out about the cuts to services, clawing back of benefits, and the closing of VA offices.  Veterans were speaking out about how they were being forced to choose between their mental health and their pension:  if they stated to the Defence Department or VA that they were “unfit for duty” before their 10 years of service was up as a result of mental health needs (such as PTSD) and if the Defence Department ruled that the mental health issues pre-dated their service time, the vet would lose his/her pension.

What?!

I have to state this one more time so I am able to process it:  if a vet, before his or her 10 years service mark has been reached, comes forward to say that his/her PTSD has become too much for them to handle, has rendered them “unfit for duty,” the Defence Department may (and has more often than not) declare(d) that said individual is not eligible for his/her pension if the DD determines that the PTSD, or other related mental health issues, pre-date his/her time in the military.

Stack this knowledge on the closing of eight VA offices, the stripping of funding to mental health supports, the lack of supports for vets to help them transition to civilian life, and what do you get?:  A frustrated military person attempting to blow up a VA office in downtown Calgary last week.

If you spoke to anyone in DD or VA, they would assure us that policies are in process of being changed, that the necessary changes needed to implement the recommendations made by The House of Commons Standing Committee on Veteran’s Affairs are “phasing in,” and that millions of extra dollars are being poured into the mental health of soldiers. 

If you spoke to Julian Fantino (Minister of Veteran’s Affairs) or Rob Nicholson (Defence Minister), they would assure us all that our vets are being taken care of and that no one in the military is being forced out before they are ready.

Except that is not what our vets are telling us in either word or deed. 

Too many vets have taken their own lives because they have no idea how they are going to care for their family without their military family’s help – their country’s help.

Mental health services have been decimated across this country at every level from Child and Youth Mental Health services, to services for severely mentally ill people on the streets, to our vets.  Federal and provincial governments have failed to provide citizens with the care they desperately need.

The fact that Stephen Harper and his cronies can puff up their chest and declare the death sentences of hundreds of more soldiers, in yet another fight that is not ours, and then cut off the support they need when/if they come home is appalling and shameful.  This government is all about selling out and cashing in.

We have all heard of the treatment this government has given vets and yet nothing changes. 

Stephen Harper loves to make vets but hates to take care of them when they return from his phony wars.  SHAME!

Julian Fantino fattens himself off of a post which steals money from men and women (and their families) who so desperately need it.  He turned his back on vets, stood them up, and refused to apologize when he was called out on his abhorrent, disrespectful behaviour.  SHAME!

Rob Nicholson attaches himself to international conflicts and coalitions which have nothing  to do with Canada, sacrificing yet more Canadian citizens, only to deny their need upon their homecoming…making many of them homeless.  SHAME!

Government capitalises upon the jingoism of past wars, WWI and WWII, for example and uses Armistice Day as a photo op to support its current, hawkish designs. 

The same key words are employed now to stir the people to arms as were one hundred years ago:  militarism, freedom, justice, way of life, terrorism (Gavrilo Princip was called a terrorist by the Austrians and Germans in 1914). 

The same old sentiment is employed to drum up support for sending yet more troops into yet another battle with which we have no connection.

The same people blindly support those old sentiments, stating that “our way of life is in danger.”

Bullshit. 

I side firmly with Gwynne Dyer and his idea, as discussed in his newest book:   Canada in the Great Power Game: 1914-1918, that Canada has been hoodwinked into war after war by Empire after Empire, causing us to sacrifice our citizens needlessly.

I agree.  We all too quickly have a knee-jerk reaction to things (shootings in Ottawa, vehicular homicide in Quebec) and attach meanings to them which have been foisted upon us by the Empire du jour. 

We swing on the teat of those Empires and, because of our imaginary indebtedness, blindly, willingly cast off hundreds of thousands of lives.

We must stop this. 

Somehow we must stop this.

We must stop the grotesque use of the iconography and rituals of Remembrance as a form of jingoism – especially as used by those who would pile high the corpses of those they have sacrificed.  This is a time to honour the dead, not to feed the war machine.

We must provide help for all those who need it – military service people or otherwise – particularly for mental health issues.

We must, by any means necessary, hold our governments to accompt when it comes to the care of those who have served.  We may not agree with the wars in which they served but we, as a society, owe support to those who chose to serve in them.  

The government put them there.  The government owes them some modicum of respect for placing them in harm's way.

Nearly one year ago, several vets illustrated that point.

As per request: My Annual Remembrance Day Speech

If I could put my ear to the rippling shadows and hear the whispers of the “…millions of mouthless dead…” who died “…pro patria…”  in that far away time.

In those far away places –

What would they tell me?

What would they tell me to tell you?

They would want you to know that the Earth is cold

And Death is lonely –

Even though there are so very many of them,

The “…mouthless dead…”

And it never seems to stop –

Even though their war.

The Great War,

Was supposed to be the war to end all wars.

They would tell me:

The Earth is cold

And Death is lonely.

They chased Honour

And Glory

Like Rainbows

And Wishes

And when they grabbed at any of them,

Came up empty handed.

They would tell me to tell you why we do this now:  this act of collective, ritual grieving.

Grieving for the old dead -

The Dead who lie in foreign fields.

We do this because those deaths matter.  They had wives, mothers, sisters, fathers, brothers, sons, and daughters.

This point is brought home to me everyday when I see my 22 year old son, my husband, and my 19 year old daughter.  One hundred years ago, they all would have enlisted – my husband and son as soldiers and my daughter as a Nursing Sister.

This point is brought home to me when I look into the face of my 12 year old son who, 100 years ago, would have watched his family march off to war only to join them in a few years.  He, like many boys his age, would lie to join his family overseas.

I often think of all of those things these days and the point of all of this ritual is brought, quickly, home to me. 

In 1917 or 1918, a German couple travelled, by train, from the small town near their farm to the city nearby.  They were not rich people so they were not able to afford a cabin of their own.  Soon it was clear to all those who sat near them that the journey would have been more comfortable for all concerned if the farm couple could, indeed, afford a cabin of their own. 

You see, the woman kept counting: 1-2-3-4-5, 1-2-3-4-5, 1-2-3-4-5.  She would pause for a moment and start again:  1-2-3-4-5.  The counting continued hour after hour.  Finally someone nearby snapped at the husband:

“Can you not quiet your woman?  Her counting makes the rest of us uneasy.”

The husband turned to the angry passenger and quietly said:  “I beg your pardon, sir. My wife has quite lost her wits.  You see, hour counting 1-2-3-4-5, is the counting of our dead sons.  All five.  All dead.  The last one died in France last week. 

I am taking her to an asylum in the city, for all she does now is weep and count her dead sons.  There is nothing I can do to comfort her.  Nothing I can do to stop her weeping; her counting.”

So many dead mothers.

So many dead sons.

One such mother’s son was Charles Hamilton Sorley; a 19 year old British Officer.  Sorley had no interest in fighting the Germans in the Great War.  He had just returned to England from studying in Germany.

Charles got home.

He enlisted.

And he fought and died on the Western Front.

He died on the Western Front – 19 years old –

A poet who did not want to fight or kill someone who may have been his friend from the university in Germany in which he studied.

A poet sceptical of those who tried to sell the war under the guises of “glory” and “honour.”

A poet who wrote about the “…millions of mouthless dead…” as a way of dealing with his anguish, anger, and angst.

When You See Millions of the Mouthless Dead'

BY CHARLES HAMILTON SORLEY

When you see millions of the mouthless dead

Across your dreams in pale battalions go,

Say not soft things as other men have said,

That you'll remember. For you need not so.

Give them not praise. For, deaf, how should they know

It is not curses heaped on each gashed head?

Nor tears. Their blind eyes see not your tears flow.

Nor honour. It is easy to be dead.

Say only this, “They are dead.” Then add thereto,

“Yet many a better one has died before.”

Then, scanning all the o'ercrowded mass, should you

Perceive one face that you loved heretofore,

It is a spook. None wears the face you knew.

Great death has made all his for evermore.

How freely we gave our sons.

How freely they died.

If, 100 years ago, my son or husband were among the “…millions of mouthless dead…” I would listen carefully –

So carefully –

To the rippling shadows –

Waiting to hear their voices

And to tell you to simply

Remember.

*********************************************************************************

The above was my speech at the annual Remembrance Day assembly.

Here is the video/slide presentation I put together:

Thank you for taking the time to read and view this post.  

It means a lot.