Further Lessons in Life ... Remembrances of the Past

There are times when "synchronicity" or coincidence or convergence is so pointedly subtle that one nearly fails to mark the things which have come together in an obvious but unlikely fashion at a particular point in the cosmic vortex. The convergence of Whitsunday and the traditional date for Memorial Day in the US is one of those "markers" that a person just absorbs without contemplation unless something else happens to cause one to ponder the meanings.


Having been raised in the US, I was not aware as a child that there was an observance called "Whitsuntide" in Europe which was synonymous with Pentecost, nor was I really aware that "Decoration Day" was meant to honor the soldiers who had fallen in the service of their country. Decoration Day was the day, when lead by my grandmother, my cousins and I helped to pick flowers (mostly peonies and "snowball" blossoms) from her yard, and the family then would make
a pilgrimage of some 25 or 30 miles to the small country cemetery which held the family burial
ground to decorate graves.


I was somewhat confused, as all small children must be by the adult commentary about "why we do these things," and only connected the trip with acute boredom and the uncomfortable scratchiness of the upholstery on the back seat of the family sedan. But, I tried to carefully tend the bouquets of hand-picked flowers arranged on the floorboard and seat of the auto. My cousins and I, three little girls, were entrusted with this important task as we were being deposited in the ample back seat of my grandfather's Packard.

There was never a thought in my young mind of military service, or foreign wars (even though I was a "war baby," born less than a year following Pearl Harbor). I'm not sure that I was fully aware of the meaning of "World War" .... One of my uncles served in Europe during WW II, and his wife, my aunt, had helped me to follow the progress of his trip home following the end of the war. I was, after all, not quite three years old when the war was over.


I didn't know "what" Europe was at that age, except that my father's family referred to Europe as the "old country." WWII ended, my uncle returned home, and with his GI benefits earned his civilian pilot's license (and gave me my first flight above the earth). He continued to develop his skill as a photographer and learned to repair television sets (TV was the latest thing in 1948) as a hobby. Much later in his life, he owned the first computer I ever saw. He had served in something called the Battle of the Bulge, as well, but he would seldom speak of the war. He was one of only two soldiers I knew as a child. The second was another uncle, who had served in the Pacific Theater, but he never spoke of his service either.


In the late 1940s when I was a bit older, and went "downtown" on shopping trips, I began to notice men in uniforms selling lapel pins made of red paper which they called "Buddy Poppies." Even though I did connect them with "the war," I still wasn't sure about war or what it was. But, I did proudly wear a "Buddy Poppy" pinned to the bodice of my dress, and later at home, I held the little flower in my fingers and tried to understand the mystery of its importance.


There soon followed the "Police Action" known as the Korean War. My step brother was "stationed in Alaska," and we were glad that he didn't have to go and fight, but war was still a mystery to me. As I traveled through the 50s, I was confirmed into the Church one Pentecost, graduated high school and started college still without much awareness of what war really was. I understood that war was now "cold," we practiced "duck and cover" in school and knew that we should be afraid of Russians and atomic bombs. But, television and the "movie" news reels had provided only sanitized accounts of various battles and "theaters of war," and my father's family cried when they spoke of their long ago homes and families left behind in the Old Country. War was still something that would never happen to me, it was a part of history, not something that I "need worry about." One Sunday evening in 1954, Ed Sullivan presented the brave French nurses who had stayed the course with their soldiers at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu on his television show.



Someone said that Dien Bien Phu was in French Indo China, and the French had lost the war there. French Indo China was now going to be called "Viet Nam."

My goodbye to ignorance and innocence followed soon after I graduated high school, and entered college in 1960. Within two years, I had friends who were volunteering to serve in "South East Asia" and they wrote home that they knew about places called Laos, Cambodia and South Viet Nam. For a long time, "people" including our government said they weren't there ... but they were
there, and finally the official news reports admitted that they were dying there as well. And, somehow, for the first time in my life, I read "In Flanders Fields" in a Freshman English Lit class:

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.

Major John McCrae, 1915

I thought of the Buddy Poppies that had been sold on the streets of my home town, and I finally understood why we needed to remember, because I was losing friends now, and realized what WWII had cost both sides of my family. And there was another verse, a song about English ladies who remembered and went dancing at Whitsuntide and the red poppies that grew where once their husbands, brothers and sons had plowed, sown, harvested and maintained a familiar and constant way of life. I think it may have been Joan Baez, or another folk singer who gave us a version of "Dancing At Whitsun" here in the US:

Dancing at Whitsun
(Austin John Marshall, 1967)

The fields they stand empty, the hedges grow free --
No young men to turn them or pastures go seed
They are gone where the forest of oak trees before
Have gone, to be wasted in battle.

Down from the green farmlands and from their loved ones
Marched husbands and brothers and fathers and sons.
There's a fine roll of honor where the Maypole once stood,
And the ladies go dancing at Whitsun.

There's a straight row of houses in these latter days
All covering the downs where the sheep used to graze
There's a field of red poppies (a gift from the Queen)

But the ladies remember at Whitsun,

And the ladies go dancing at Whitsun.

Headington Quarry Dance, 1895

I'd filed away all those songs and protests and the years since then have been more than another 40, and suddenly in an internet blog, a writer reminded me that in this year, Whitsun and the traditional "Decoration Day" fall on the same weekend. And with with the thought of Whitsuntide, I again thought of the ladies dancing in poppy fields in honor of their lost lovers, brothers and sons, and I remembered those long ago little girls who picked flowers from their grandmother's yard to carry to the graves of loved ones.....

And the the words of the song, "Where Have All The Flowers Gone?" still ring with truth ... "When will we ever learn?" We're nearly 100 years past Flanders Fields, so how can it be that
great nations and great statesmen still find it so difficult to learn obvious lessons in life? We still replace Maypoles with War Memorials, graveyards are still filled with flags honoring our fallen soldiers, and young girls still pick flowers for Decoration Day.

Where have all the graveyards gone?

Long time passing.
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Long time ago.
Where have all the graveyards gone"
Covered with flowers every one
When will we ever learn?
When will we ever learn?

Pete Seeger, 1961