Remember......
Today is a special day in Canada. Remembrance day. The day when, on the eleventh hour, on the eleventh day, on the eleventh month, we remember those who thought and died for freedom, those who helped on the homefront and those who died in the holocaust. It inspired me to make this poem. I'm sorry if it's not perfect, because I don't write alot of poetry, but I really wanted to do this, because Remembrance day is very close to my heart.
1812, a busy year.
The British fighting over there and over here.
Luddites at home, Napoleon too.
Although they stopped him at Waterloo.
But what the British often forget,
is when they had a round two with their former land that now the sun did set.
America angry, the British stopping her ships,
But now this time without Ben Franklin's quips.
America went north, to take the British colony that sat atop them like a dome.
The locals soon stood up to defend their home.
By the time it was over, no one really won (despite what others claim).
But there is no doubt that thousands have been killed or maimed.
The American's did not stay in the land,
Which to this day, we know as Canada, eh?
Remember, remember.......
A hundred years later, and not long after a fight with the South African Boer,
Canada is called into a war.
"The huns," call Britain, to all of her empire, "Are marching through Europe."
"They will kill anyone, women and children, priests and nuns."
So off young men went, to the recruiting stations.
Young boys, not much older then me (and I am but sixteen),
Got sent to France to wipe the continent clean.
Fighting off German attacks, and sharing the trenches with British, Irish and ANZAC.
One man with a gun, this is what to blame,
To the war that killed too many to name.
Remember, remember........
The trenches were hell on earth.
It didn't matter if you were English or French, from St. John's or from Perth.
Men losing foot and hand to Trench Rot, beening torn apart in No man's land.
Being more lice then man was more then you could stand.
At Vimy Ridge, Canada showed what she could do,
Becoming more then a country that when mentioned brings the responce of "who?"
Yet still, lot's of boys and girls did not come home,
As white crosses with red poppies show, lined up in huge numbers like legions of Rome.
Leaving mothers without sons, fathers with daughters.
Babies without mums or dads, wives widowed by the fire of a mortar.
Remember, remember......
Years later, it happens agian. The world is at war.
Brave men sign up, those who can't go help out on the homefront. The world prepares for more blood and gore.
Prairie farm boys see the ocean for the first time, keeping Canada and Britian safe from German U-boats, attacking like steel sharks coming from the gloom.
Sinking ships and sending many good people to their doom.
In the air over England, on the ground at D-Day, Hong Kong and Sicily.
There were heros all over, from home to as far as Italy.
Men who would sacrifice themselves for the lives of others. Men who would jump on a grenade to save their squad. Women who would devote the best years of their lives working in factories at home or healing the injured. Children who learned to live with less; less toys, less meat, sometimes even one less daddy.
Remember, remember.......
And least we forget, those who suffered the most. They were not from Canada, but they were people.
Punished by a man working to make them unequal.
Fired from their jobs, kicked out of their homes, told they are vermin.
Told because of what they are, they aren't allowed to be German.
Stuffed into trains, sent to prison camps, separated from their loved ones.
Heads shaved, turned into numbered slaves, who's lives often ended in a gas chamber, of malnutrition or at the barrel of a gun.
I tell you, look in their eyes. Do these poor people not have a soul? Why strip them of their humanity?
Do they look any different from you, from me?
Remember, remember.......
After the war, Canada goes through more. In Korea, we lose over five hundred.
Peacekeepers the world over walk through deadly streets, and hope they don't end up dead.
In Afghanistan, many go, and many don't come back.
Men and women lost to guns and bombs. The Peters and the Marys, the Cindys and the Jacks.
A moment of silence comes, to remeber these people and what they did for us.
I stand up straight, my knees lock up, my arms go limp beside me.
Tears stream down my face as I remember, as I remember the good people of my country who fought, be they french, english, european or Metis, fought so others could be free.
Remember, for that is the key.
The key to liberty. The key to freedom. The power to be master of your own destiny.
To belong to yourself, not to a master, not to the state.
To not be under the thumb of a regime of hate.
There are those who would flake out of remembering, even those who say it glorify violence,
Well, it doesn't. These people went through hell so you could have the right to even think of such defiance.
So, remember. Remember the soldier who died so you could be free.
Remember the housewife who had to explain that they won't ever again see daddy.
Remember the people at home who stood behind them.
Remember those who evil people seeked to condemn their existance.
Remember, Remember.........