Remembrance Day – Don’t Bother, We’ve Already Forgotten

When the peace treaty is signed, the war isn't over for the veterans, or the family. It's just starting. - Karl Marlantes

But this Veterans Day, I believe we should do more than sing the praises of the bravery and patriotism that our veterans have embodied in the past. We should take this opportunity to re-evaluate how we are treating our veterans in the present. - Nick Lampson

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields - excerpt from “In Flanders Fields” - John McCrae

I was intrigued last week when businessman and philanthropist Brett Wilson was in the news with a request for businesses to delay putting up Christmas decorations until we have had time to honor those who paid the ultimate sacrifice for us – the veterans who have served in past conflicts and those who serve in the present.

I was equally intrigued when Angela Kokott responded with a piece where she suggests that this may be inappropriate of Mr. Wilson, closing her opinion piece with “Our veterans fought for all sorts of freedoms including free enterprise.”

While Ms. Kokott may have a point, I would like to offer a counterpoint.

Many people who believe in free enterprise will exercise that freedom on the very day when we should be honoring our veterans.  Those same people will exercise that freedom every day of the year (which is their right) and will never take the time to honor those who paid the ultimate sacrifice and whose families continued to pay the ultimate sacrifice for many years afterward.

And while I can’t read Mr. Wilson’s mind, I believe that is the point he is trying to make.  As a successful businessman, he doesn’t need to be lectured by anyone about free enterprise.  However, as someone who is committed to honoring veterans, he also recognizes that when we defer honoring vets to “another day”, that deferral gets deferred again …. and again … and again … until we don’t even bother.

Imagine this scenario.

You’re sitting in a coffee shop.  Your day is a busy day – you’re meeting friends to go shopping later and while waiting, you get incensed over the price of your latte and spend an hour complaining about it on social media.  It may or may not be November 11th.

You see a man or woman typing a few things hurriedly on a laptop and you saunter over and ask if they are on social media also.

“No”, they reply, “I’m getting ready to go overseas and I’m writing down a few things for my family to take care of while I’m gone.”

Translation:

While you’re busy spending your time with what you think is important, I’m going to put my life on the line so that you may continue to do “whatever” you think you are entitled to or what you think is important.  My action requires more courage than the courage you summoned to complain about your latte but I do it because I am called to stand up for the rights and freedoms of you and your family (people I will never know) and so I answered the call.  If I come back, I may be so mentally or physically scarred that I may be a burden on my family and others for the rest of my Life.  I may be financially destitute, unable to secure honest work to take care of my family while attempting to survive on the pittance the government I fought for offers me.  I may even take my Life in the process, given that suicide rates are much higher for returning vets than for many other groups.  Despite all of this, I don’t do it for the glory of it.  I do it because it is the right thing to do.  Meanwhile, your Life will continue on, oblivious to the struggles that my family and I may experience as a result of my action.  I’m sorry – I’m rambling.  What is the issue with your latte?

Men and women in the Armed Services and as First Responders put their Life and the lives of their family at risk every day so that we are free to live the Life we choose.

Many believe that they serve so that we can do whatever we want as a result of the freedom for which so high a price has been paid.

But if that is true, then you would have no problem looking a veteran straight in the eye and saying “Because of your sacrifice, I am able to do ____________ with or in my Life.”

What you fill in the blanks better be worth it, otherwise you have missed the point of the ultimate sacrifice.

It was so that you could make yourself, your family, your community, your nation and the world significantly better, doing things that matter.

If you can’t fill in the blank with something meaningful or impactful, you are telling veterans that the ultimate sacrifice that they offered up was for nothing and that you don’t give a damn about what they gave up for you.

It is also important to never forget why their sacrifice was necessary, lest we or our children be forced to make the same sacrifice for the same reason, making the original sacrifice a waste of a valuable learning opportunity.

Honoring the sacrifice of others requires more than attending services on November 11th as we remember those who have fallen, those who were lost, those who were wounded and their families.

We need to honor them every day with tangible, measurable acts of gratitude and service.

They made a sacrifice to honor us.

What are we doing to honor them?

In service and servanthood, lest we forget.

Harry

In recognition and gratitude for the many I know who have served, including my father, Harry Tucker (Royal Canadian Navy), former father-in-law Robert Johnston (Colonel – USAF, deceased), John Larsen (Rocky Mountain Rangers), Vince Fowler, Glen Squires, Wesley Pierce, Kevin Cullis, Sandra Squirrel-Lear, Kareen Tucker (USMC) and the many other friends and family that I know who served and the hundreds of thousands whom I will never know who made personal sacrifices so that I and we can experience the Gifts that we are blessed to experience.

On another note, this photo is circulating around the web these days. 

I think this is am amazing photo.

What do you think?

Does their sacrifice mean anything to you?

How do you honor it and them?

When you buy a poppy, don’t just drop a coin in the can and move on.

If a veteran is present, ask them about their story, listen intently and then thank them for their service.

It matters.

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Addendum – Frustrations Expressed - November 9, 2015

A great friend of mine whose father, a policeman, was killed in the line of duty reached out to me today after reading my blog.  Here is how my friend expressed her frustration via SMS (shared with her permission – click on image for larger version):

I think her frustrations are very fair and deserve an answer.

What do you think?

Lest We Forget–Has McDonald’s Forgotten?

The veterans of our military services have put their lives on the line to protect the freedoms that we enjoy. They have dedicated their lives to their country and deserve to be recognized for their commitment. - Judd Gregg

At the going down of the sun and in the morning, We will remember them. - Laurence Binyon (Ode of Remembrance)

I was surprised and disappointed in speaking with a member of the Royal Canadian Legion 285 in Calgary yesterday when he expressed a mix of disappointment and anger that the McDonald’s restaurant in the area would not allow the distribution of poppies in support of November 11th.

In exploring this a little further, I found other McDonald’s restaurants that also did not provide poppies in their restaurants and so I reached out to McDonald’s on Twitter to ask why.

Here was their response:

Not only was I surprised by this but others were as well as evidenced by tweets like this one:

There were some other responses that I can’t even put here.

The men and women who serve and who have served do so to protect our freedom, including the freedom of choice.  They serve so that we may be blessed with the freedom to choose what we want to have or not have in our lives and in doing so, they have made sacrifices so that corporations like McDonald’s can make choices like this.

But on the topic of choices, the owner of a McDonald’s franchise cannot opt out of selling Big Macs, McFlurries and the other stuff that serve the corporate brand but can opt out of that which honors the brave men and women who serve in our military, in our reserves and as first responders.

If I owned such a restaurant, one of the things that I would feel blessed by is the fact that the sacrifice of others provides me with the opportunity to make a good living and to create a good living for those who work with me.  In recognition of this fact, I would sure as heck want to honor those who have enabled such a Life for me.

And this causes me to wonder, having earned the freedom of choice by way of the sacrifice of others, if we have the wisdom to make the right choices.

Maybe having made their choice that honoring those who serve is optional, that I should make a choice regarding the support of McDonald’s.

The Bottom Line

People we will never know offer their lives, their health, their freedom and yes, even their families, so that we may have our health, our happiness and our freedom.

The gift of freedom of choice is only of value when we know how to honor it wisely.

The least we can do is to say thank you from our heart and show our support whenever we can.

Lest we forget.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

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Addendum – McDonald’s Responds – November 6, 2014

John Gibson of McDonald’s Corporation was kind enough to supply a response which is outlined below.

With apologies for posting my response before his (I needed to do so in order to post a photo that I took), I have the following items to note in response to his response.

In regards to Mr. Gibson’s comment “Since we cannot place a collection box on the front counter for food safety reasons ….”, I offer three items of note:

1. Many other restaurants in Canada do not have such a restriction for safety reasons and I am not aware of any significant cases of customer injury stemming from a poppy box.  I was in a competitor restaurant today and their poppy boxes were on the counter where my food was presented.
2. The guy standing next to me at a McDonald’s counter could easily have his poppy fall into my food as we wait, therefore I would like to ask other customers to stand back from my food (sorry – I am a literalist and couldn’t resist).
3. I took this photo in a McDonald’s restaurant in Calgary today, which would thus appear to be in violation of the policy Mr. Gibson states or prove the fact that McDonald’s can indeed place poppy collection boxes on food counters.

In regards to this comment

All McDonald’s restaurants have the option of providing a location inside or outside the restaurant where Royal Canadian Legion veterans and other authorized volunteers can distribute poppies in person.

it still provides the restaurant with the option to opt out entirely (by not providing a location) or by making it virtually impossible for the Legion to offer poppies (with the need for an excessive number of volunteers), thus allowing a restaurant to say “no” to them without actually saying no, bringing me back to my original blog comments.

In addition, in response to Mr. Gibson’s assertion of a misunderstanding, it is not helpful if their corporate Twitter account points out that restaurants can opt out without further explanation of the opt out process.  The 140 character limit on Twitter is not a rationale to explain why a vague response was provided either.

And so while I appreciate Mr. Gibson’s quick and kind response, there appears to be some corporate embellishment contained within that I couldn’t resist responding to. 

A Final Thought

I stopped by a McDonald’s in Calgary today and for fun, I asked the manager why there were no poppies available.  She informed me that they don’t offer poppies because people steal the donation cans.  That may have been a valid reason had she not followed up with the next comment: “And besides, I don’t have a number for the Royal Canadian Legion so I can’t find them to have poppies brought over.”

I don’t think they are too hard to find.

I salute McDonald’s for their support of the men and women in service to our nation as explained by Mr. Gibson but perhaps the misunderstanding Mr. Gibson refers to stems more from inconsistent execution on their part than anything else.

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Remembrance Day–Who Needs It Anymore?

War does not determine who is right - only who is left. - Bertrand Russell

The cold, cloud-filled skies of November are a reminder that Remembrance Day is upon us yet again.

And as I think about the memorial services that will take place around the world on November 11, I wonder why we even bother anymore.

After all, who cares about …..

• The brave men and women who sacrificed their physical and mental wellbeing, their families and their lives to ensure the freedom of people they will never meet.
• The gruelling, inhumane, mind-bending conditions that they endured, whether it was the mud-filled trenches, the lice-ridden clothing, the disease and pestilence, the sight of limbs blown off, the terror of being trapped in a burning ship or tank, the incessant thunder of artillery, the whine of a sniper’s bullet zinging by someone’s helmet or some other event that most of us wouldn’t have the courage to deal with.
• A battle or war that may have physically lasted a few years but was relived in someone’s dreams and nightmares for the rest of their lives.
• The families left to raise children with a single parent.
• The families trying to help a mom, dad, brother, sister or child overcome physical disability or the equally crippling scourge of PTSD.
• The millions of civilians maimed, orphaned, wounded, killed or traumatized by the battles all around them and the ordinance left behind, to be discovered by accident over the years.
• Veterans who in later years have been abandoned by the governments whose call they answered but now barely survive on pensions that are an embarrassment.

So on Remembrance Day, when we think about the question “Who needs it anymore?”, the answer becomes clear.

We all do …. more than ever.

Our gratitude for those who serve should not be limited to a single day of the year.  Their sacrifice should be honored every day and be reflected every day in how we live our lives.

After all, this is why they serve – so that we are free to live lives of purpose, freedom and personal choice.

And so that, hopefully, the current war may be the last.

The veterans of WWI are all gone now but we still have many brave men and women around us who served in WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Cyprus and many other theaters of battle.

And as we stand freezing our butts off at a Remembrance Day service (if we even go) and we text a friend asking to meet up later for an uber-complicated latte while complaining that the kids won’t stop whining that they want to go home, remember this.

For many of our brave men and women, they didn’t endure such minor inconveniences from one day to the next.

For many, each day was hell and the day that followed was worse than the last.

They also couldn’t just walk away from it just because they felt like it.

And many, after enduring the worst conditions imaginable, were rewarded with death or permanent physical or mental wounds.

While we often choose many things to complain about in a world filled with abundance, most of us aren’t dealing with lice, typhoid, trench foot or PTSD, nor are we dodging exploding artillery shells, hiding from the threat of an unseen sniper, gasping for breath as poison gas tears our lungs out, jumping out of an aircraft in the dark as tracer bullets and AA fill the air around us, running across a beach while machine guns tear up the sand around us or swimming in frigid or shark-infested water while floating, burning fuel threatens to burn us alive.

May we never have to deal with the conditions and events that these brave men and women dealt with and continue to deal with.

Because that’s what they sacrificed and died for – so that someday we might finally live in a world where we won’t need to deal with these things anymore.

Wear a poppy to honor those who have served.

Find a veteran, look them in the eye and thank them.  Help one in need or make a donation to a charity in the name of a veteran; living, passed on or fallen.

We have what we have because they gave what they gave.

Lest we forget.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

Lest We Forget … or Have We Forgotten Already?

It’s a damp, cool , overcast day in Fort Saskatchewan, a small town just outside of of Edmonton and I’m listening to the bugler play “The Last Post”.

We have gathered to remember those who have made or will make the ultimate sacrifice so that we may continue to experience the freedoms that we cherish ….. so that we may experience the freedoms we think WE have earned and deserve. 

“We have earned and deserve” - there’s an interesting thought.

And so while the men and women who serve do so without asking anything of us, the least we can do is remember and honor their sacrifice.

Lest we forget.

Lest we forget that as we enjoy the comforts of our lifestyle, there are others who have foregone such comforts. 

These are the men and women who fought in the trenches with nothing to keep them warm in the middle of a bitterly cold winter other than pieces of wool clothing when we complain that our favorite “uber deluxe coat” is not available in that shade of blue we wanted.

These are the people who drive into harm’s way, every mile having the potential to produce the mine or IED that will take their lives in an instant or leave them maimed for life while we sit consumed in anger that traffic is not moving as fast as we would like.  No one is shooting at us as we sit in traffic either.

These are the men and women who suffered through little or no food when supply lines were choked off while we consume in excess quantities or complain that “such and such a meal is not to my liking and I want the restaurant to remake it”, afterwards spending days telling everyone about the lousy experience we had.  The restaurant is also not likely to kill us with typhus, cholera or the plethora of other diseases that these people dealt with daily.

These are the people who stared at the beaches of Normandy as they approached on the morning of June 6, 1944 and realized what was before them or stared at the cliffs of Dieppe and girded their mind in preparation for their assault while we complain that the time-share that we want on some beach in Hawaii is not available on the one weekend that would really make us happy.

In a world of comfort, we sometimes visualize things that make us unhappy and yet all of these things pale in comparison to the things that the men and women who serve and sacrifice have faced and will continue to face.

I can’t help but think that surely they didn’t make these sacrifices so that we would have the freedom to complain about how our Life is lacking. 

It is true that they made the ultimate sacrifice so that we can live Life as we choose.  They make no demands or attach stipulations on how we live our lives.  But are our choices the most respectful, honorable ones we could be making as an expression of our gratitude?

Imagine a scenario where your child is standing in the middle of a highway and suddenly you see a large truck bearing down on them.  Your child is transfixed in fear, you are unable to get to them in time and you know you are about to watch your child die.  Suddenly, out of the blue, someone rushes past you, dives towards the child and they both roll to safety just as the truck roars by.  You thank them profusely and the stranger is humble and gracious in receiving your gratitude, insisting that it “was nothing” or it was “the right thing to do”.

You are indebted to that person for the rest of your Life and with great reason.  Every day that you experience the love of your child, you are reminded of the sacrifice a complete stranger was willing to make.  They put themselves on the line for you, did so without asking “what’s in it for me” and without subsequently demanding a “reward”.

By the same token, the men and women who serve do this every day and have done so for generations.  The fact that we don’t necessarily see them in action every day shouldn’t be an excuse to forget the sacrifices they have made.

When I think that someone whom I will never meet is willing to sacrifice their Life so that I may live mine, that is humbling beyond description.

What makes my Life so worthy that they would do this?

I guess it depends on what I do with it, doesn’t it?

Do I make my Life something that says that their sacrifice wasn’t for naught?

It depends on whether I choose to remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice and to make sure that my Life is worthy of that sacrifice.

Because if I don’t remember their sacrifice and don’t do something to honor that sacrifice, then their sacrifice is in vain … and the greatest insult to the men and women who serve.

So when we have something to complain about, maybe we should pause and reflect on what complete strangers were and are willing to do for us.

We haven’t earned a Life of abundance and opportunity.

They earned it for us. 

All they ask is that we use the opportunity to live our Life to its maximum potential and to be grateful for opportunity to do so.  That’s not too much to ask, is it?

And so today, we are called to remember the tremendous gift that they have given us.

But we shouldn’t limit the expression of gratitude to just today.  It is one we should express every day.

Lest we forget.

In service and servanthood.

Harry