From Vimy Ridge to Mons Badonis, Kandahar to Juno Beach, we shall remember them. Even if we have no idea who they were.
We often do not. Even in the two world wars a staggering number of the dead have no known grave, though we usually know who they are, just not where, especially if they fought for the Western Allies. But the long struggle for freedom and decency is marked not only by unknown graves, or none, but also by unknown battles, unmarked causes, and desecrated bodies left for the wolves and crows.
Years ago in Britain, filming my Constitutional trilogy, I encountered several hills whose natural defensive features made them strongpoints from the Bronze Age and earlier. And I saw dim visions of generations fighting and dying in small battles, not just long forgotten but never known except by them. And such places exist around the world because petty tribal quarrels as well as clashes of massive armies have plagued mankind from the start.
Schools may not teach that slavery existed everywhere from time immemorial before being stamped out in recent centuries years by the West. But while thousands who died to end it are buried honourably in places like Gettysburg, Cold Harbor, and Fredericksburg, how many perished nameless before some vanished village trying to save wives, sisters, and children from abuse, torture, and murder, often unsuccessfully? Shall we not remember them?
J.R.R. Tolkien captured the feel of those British sites in the backstory to the “Lord of the Rings,” particularly regarding Arthedain, that remnant of the once-mighty Numenorian northern kingdom of Arnor ultimately destroyed by the Witch-King of Angmar whose defenders were among those entombed in the haunted Barrow Downs. And while some may consider fantasy inappropriate to remembrance, such writing varies widely in quality as well as genre.
At its pinnacle, where Tolkien stands, it is profoundly morally serious. Including the vital point that nameless men, and the families behind them, who rallied at Weathertop and other local strongpoints yet lost both war and kingdom, gave rise to the “Rangers” from whose obscure lineage legitimate authority was restored.
Now consider King Arthur. Not the figure in convoluted medieval legends lampooned in “The Once and Future King,” but the obscurely historical Romanized British chieftain who won an important battle at Mons Badonis in a losing war against Germanic invaders. I say “losing” because the Angles, Saxons and don’t-get-no-respect Jutes ultimately drove their Celtic foes into Wales. But some survived there, which matters.
It also matters, and more, that by slowing the advancing tide, Arthur’s victory bought time for the alchemy that converted these bloodthirsty pagan nihilists into Christian defenders of liberty under law who, three centuries later, rallied to the Saxon Alfred the Great at Egbert’s Stone and defeated the bloodthirsty pagan Danish nihilists in a story at once fantastical and true.
On our British trips we found the supposed Egbert’s Stone, and a small uncelebrated rock it was too, no Stone of Erech. But we certainly did not find the graves of any who fought with Alfred in his crucial battles against fearful odds. Nor are their names inscribed on walls like those at Vimy, the Australian National Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux or the Indian Memorial at Neuve-Chapelle. Shall we not remember them?
Or consider Jack Nichols’ haunting World War II painting “Drowning Sailor.” Most killed in the Battle of the Atlantic went to Davey Jones, not some quiet, honoured resting place. But while it matters to name Jack Smith who did not return and left a widow so Hitler could not starve Britain, it matters more to say that, every time duty called, someone gave all their tomorrows for our today, and even their names.
We commemorate on Nov. 11, rightly, because we need a focus. And we who never served bow our heads beside our veterans and naturally imagine a World War I death, being suddenly blown shrieking into unrecognizable fragments amid the stinking mud of the trenches. But please think also of those who last saw dawn while banners snapped in the wind at Mons Badonis, then were disemboweled by a sword-thrust and perished from the Earth and any form of memory because they loved freedom more than life.
Remember also those who deserved a better cause than that in which they died. We may split the difference over Bosworth Field, where there were arguments on both sides, or even Culloden Moor. But Nichols’ sailor was German; as the artist said in 1998, “When you are drowning, you lose your nationality, don’t you?”
To fight in an evil cause is a perilous thing, in the next world as in this. But may God have mercy on all who stood, even mistakenly, upon all the ramparts this troubled world has seen. We shall remember them.
