Two minutes

How are we to remember? They weren’t our stories. Not our experiences. My dear friend Ralph Margetson presses me with increasing urgency to remind readers of the price paid in war. The lost lives. Broken bodies. Wrecked families. Bright futures torn to shreds and scattered on the wind.

But how do we do that? Or, more precisely, how do we measure the cost of events that occurred so long ago? Numbers can’t do it. Numbers too easily succumb to the abstract. They become artifacts of historic texts. The grist of classwork drudgery, draining meaning from the lives they tally and sort.

So what are we left with? How else are we to understand the scale and meaning of the sacrifice that has been made in the name of war? How do we feel the pain? The anguish? Sorrow? Desperation?

We are left only with their stories. We have their voices. Perhaps all we need do is listen. I had the great honour of spending a couple hours with Russ Burrows last week. In his first day of action in World War II, Russ landed on the beach in Dieppe and was captured. The entire battle was over before lunch time.

The fresh-faced kid from north Oshawa fared better than many of the other Canadians on the French beach that day in 1942. Nearly 1,000 boys died that morning. Many were friends. Guys he had trained with. Spent his free time with. They were gone in an instant. Before his eyes.

He spent the better part of the next three years as a prisoner of war (POW); caged in a German stalag—deprived, frightened and helpless. Early in 1945, with the Soviet army nearing, and winter gripping northern Europe, Burrows and thousands of other POWs were forced to march westward.

Many died of exhaustion and exposure along the way. It was a relentlessly cold winter. Minus 25 Celsius in February. Remaining below zero into the middle of March. Some say the purpose was to exterminate the POWs—revenge for the bombing Dresden and other atrocities inflicted upon German civilians. Others claim they were hostages, to be used as pawns in negotiations toward peace. No matter the motive—Russ’s life, already on a knife’s edge, had become more perilous.

Russ’s story is told in these pages, starting on page 3. He is friendly, engaging and generous with his time. It is not easy for him to tell these stories. Each retelling comes at a cost. He is a strong and sturdy fellow. He struggles mightily to quell the rush of emotions and heartache that well up inside him when asked to recount that morning at Dieppe. Life in the stalag. Escape from the march. His buddies Pat Ireland and Sussex.

To do this, Russ must skim over the most hurtful bits. There are experiences he won’t talk about. He has seen things he is not able or willing to describe. Or, more accurately, relive. Like others who have seen the horror of war with their own eyes—the brutal capacity of humans to inflict senseless savagery upon one another— Russ veers widely around such difficult terrain.

“If you weren’t there you can never know what it was really like,” explained Russ.

So where does that leave us? How do we continue to learn from the experiences of war? The tragic consequences? The heroism and bravery? The never-ending sadness that war leaves in its wake?

How do we learn from Russ Burrows, Ralph Margetson and others if they don’t believe we have the capacity—or perhaps the strength—to know what they know?

All we can do is work harder at remembering. We must make the time to remember. We must face the disappointing reality that time erodes the resonance of these stories—that context falls away, to be replaced by easy-to-consume Hollywood confections.

Their stories are fragile. They will wither and decay in time if left untended. Unheard.

It is in our respectful silence on November 11 that we must peer into the stories of those who have sacrificed everything. We must strive to understand what they cannot say. We must conjure their dreams and seek inspiration in their spirit.

At 11 a.m. on Monday let us all stop for two minutes. Let us put down our tools and bathe in the silence. Let us consider their stories. Let us honour their lives. Let us remember.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca