Seigneur des Arm
I served a mission in France and Belgium and it was there that I began to understand the consequences of war. It was there that I first saw in innumerable rows of white. Verdun, her rolling hills capped with a chapel to the dead. The windows that let you gaze upon the anonymous bones. The neighboring city that was no more – only a memorial chapel and pock marks instead of pedestrians. Calais with her white cliffs. The bunkers remained.
It was in Calais that I stopped at a little cemetery that summer. I walked along the rows of headstones. Unlike many that I had seen, each stone was engraved with a few sentences as tribute. These were American boys. I saw it on one. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” And I wept.
Seigneur des Arm
The graves we saw in a cemetary in Thailand listed ages of the combatants How young most of them were. The sacrifice of those so new in their life affected me such that it is vivid 20 years later. On Sunday I expected to sing our National Hymn “God of Our Fathers” or at least Kipling’s “God of Our Fathers, Known of Old” with it’s last line, “Lest we forget, lest we forget”. Instead we got the usual, “Do What is Right”. I wanted some mention of the day. I was embarrased that we were so cavalier about this particular holiday, especially because there was a retired colonal sitting behind me. I ran to the dollar store on Monday to pick a few water pistols for our cookout. There was a lady checking out with a bundle of flowers in her hands. I couldn’t help but smuggly think how tacky. Then I realized she was decorating someones grave with those flowers. Perhaps a parent or some other loved one. Perhaps she had lost someone in a war. Surely something better than Dollar Store flowers would have been a better tribute…. I noticed at the end of the day, I had never put out my flag. Perhaps we will need no great and final war. We will just do ourselves in by attrition.
Comment by JNS — 5/31/2005 @ 10:12 pm
JNS, I am moved beyond comment.
Comment by J. Stapley — 5/31/2005 @ 10:31 pm
We also forgot to display our flag, went to a cookout, played some frisbee, etc. Then we took the kids to see The Dark Side overcome The Force. How’s that for honoring the memory of our war dead ? Contrition, I would say, is better than attrition.
Comment by Brent — 6/1/2005 @ 1:36 am
So wait, JNS–are you saying that the woman buying flowers at the Dollar Store was doing a good thing or a bad thing?
Comment by Justin H — 6/2/2005 @ 1:45 pm
Justin H., I’m pretty sure she is confessing – comparing her estimation of the purchase at the time and her action throughout the day.
Comment by J. Stapley — 6/2/2005 @ 2:15 pm
Justin H. Have you ever seen the flowers ar the dollar store?
Comment by JNS — 6/2/2005 @ 2:44 pm
JNS–I haven’t, but certainly almost any gesture is better than none? Or is that what you’re trying to say?
I don’t mean to be obnoxious. I really enjoyed the beginning of your post, then felt a bit perplexed by the end. Is the sentence “Surely something better…” a quote of what you were thinking as you felt smug?
Comment by Justin H — 6/2/2005 @ 4:04 pm
J., you write:
I wonder sometimes if it isn’t precisely these sorts of requirements that will end up fulfilling their own prophecies. If so, may God indeed have mercy on our souls.
Comment by Justin H — 6/2/2005 @ 4:08 pm
John H., you hit on the sentiment that I was feeling.
Comment by J. Stapley — 6/2/2005 @ 4:28 pm
Justin H. There is a monument In France so obnoxiously (no retort intended) enormous that one is drawn to it out of sheer curiosity There is nothing estheticly pleasing about the structure. What is it is an arched edifice with column after column with thousands and thousands of names graven in the marble. These are those who died in a battle in that place who were never found. The monument is a colossus of ugliness. Its purpose, however is magnificent.
The purpose of the dollar store flowers, if a bit tacky, may have been a decent gesture, and yes something is better than nothing. I had done next to nothing.
Comment by JNS — 6/2/2005 @ 7:32 pm
I see, JNS. I appreciate you taking the time to clarify.
Comment by Justin H — 6/3/2005 @ 10:08 am
I served in France too. I was most struck by the photographs of the WWI battlefields at the museum near where the armistice was signed. I’ve never seen such utter desolation wrought by the hand of man –not mere destruction, but actual desolation.
Comment by Zerin Hood — 6/21/2005 @ 2:06 pm
[…] There are poignant stories of the quick and the brave and I feel very much as I did five months ago. I also have this hope – that the Lord shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. […]
Pingback by Splendid Sun — 11/11/2005 @ 12:33 am
Jonathan, I read the ending of your initial statement as accepting the inevitability of Armageddon. I can accept the inevitability of such a war, given the overpopulation of an earth with limited resources and given the fact that human beings, particularly young males, prefer violence to boredom and passive waiting.
What I can’t accept is the prophecies of the Book of Revelations that imply that a vengeful God will hasten the conflict and, indeed, assist in the destruction: “I saw the heaven opened and beheld a white horse. He that sat upon him was called Faithful and True and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. His eyes were as a flame of fire and he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood and his name is called the Word of God.”
Many, many Christian, Latter-day Saints among them, believe that the figure on that white horse is the same person who spoke the Beatitudes.
No way.
Comment by Levi Peterson — 11/20/2005 @ 10:45 am
As I reread my comment above, I wish I could get back into it and change it. Since I don’t know how, I will add that I see that I have implied that Jonathan endorses the idea of a vengeful deity. I am sure he doesn’t.
I will also add that I too visited battlefields and military cemeteries while a missionary in Belgium during the mid-1950s. I remember particularly the cemetery behind the citadel at Liege where the Germans buried citizens executed in retaliation for acts of the Resistance, a place very sobering, very evocative of regret.
Comment by Levi Peterson — 11/20/2005 @ 11:30 am