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2. Christ in Flanders

This advertisement, printed in the guidebook issued to Vimy Pilgrims, encourages Canadians to focus on the positive legacy of the war. The crusader's sword, the ethereal light bathing the Vimy memorial, the symbols of nationhood - all suggest that the war gave Canadians much to be thankful for. 1

Just a wayside Calvary
Historians have yet to undertake the task of studying the religion of the trenches, a curious faith which blended fundamentalist salvationism and superstition with a superficial and vague understanding of liturgy. Yet it seems that, however much soldiers resented the moralizing influence of the chaplains who tried to curb the few pleasures available to them, they felt a deep connection to the figure of Jesus Christ.

Indeed, the constant sight of roadside shrines seems to have made a deep impression on soldiers who saw in Christ a comrade who understood and shared in their suffering. In the poem 'Croix Rouge,' inspired by a shrine at a crossroads near the entrance to the trenches at Neuve Chapelle, artilleryman Edgar McInnis reflected upon the relevance of Christ to his own situation:

Before the wayside shrine we fall
While yet the hours are terror-free,
Awhile to pray, awhile recall
The blood-red Cross of Calvary -
O Christ, in hours of sharp alarm -
In dark defeat or triumph's thrill -
Grant us to feel thy strengthening arm,
To know that thou art with us still;

Alike within the quiet room,
In that dim hush that bides the dark,
Or mid the raging shock of doom
Be Thou our Light and Guiding Mark -

Pierce through our stubborn, blinded night,
On our weak hearts Thy strength outpour,
They they before Thy radiant light
May set unsealed an open door.

From craven fear that bids us flee,
From vengeful hate that seeks its vent,
From pride that holds aloof from Thee,
And rebel guilt impenitent.

From our unnumbered, ancient sins,
And all our petty, sordid dross,
Cleanse us, O Christ, ere battle dims
The vision of Thy Crimson Cross.

And let our humble hearts atone
As in Thou presence now we bend,
That in Thy strength, and Thine alone,
We may endure unto the end. 2

Another poem, written by a Quebec poet, discusses the same themes through the eyes of a non-combatant:

Le Christ au Roncier
Un fier matin d'été plein d'ardente lumière,
Dans l'Aisne, les Germains chassés par nos poilus,
Pour braver le Très Haut, jusque dans son calvaire,
Contre une croix rustique acharnent leurs obus.

Sacrilège d'enfer! sur la cible sacrée,
L'Allemand fait pleuvoir et le fer et le feu!
La croix craque, se brise, et, signet d'épopée,
Dans un roncier touffu, s'écroule l'Homme-Dieu!

Quel symbole c'est là! Sur sa terre de France,
Ce grand Christ ravagé, levant au ciel ses bras,
Comme pour appeler le céleste vengeance
Sur les profanateurs de tous ses Golgotha.

Dans ses yeux tout puissants, gardant de grosses larmes,
Quelque chose vous parle et vous grandit le coeur:
De son roncier touffu, le Christ guide nos armes ...
Sonne clairon français, chante clair et vainqueur! 3

Another notable poem in this genre is Canon Frederick George Scott's 'On the Rue de Bois.' The poem was suggested to Scott by a shattered calvary he passed near Fleurbaix in March 1915, and was submitted to the Times by General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien, the commander of the Second Army, to which the 1st Canadian Division was attached at the time.

O pallid Christ within his broken shrine,
Not those torn Hands and not that Heart of Thins
Have given the nations blood to drink like wine.
Through weary years and 'neath the changing skies
Men turned their back on those appealing Eyes
And scorned as vain Thine awful Sacrifice.

Kings with their armies, children in their play,
n Have passed unheeding down this shell-ploughed way:
The great world knew not where its true strength lay.

In pomp and luxury, in lust of gold,
In selfish ease, in pleasures manifold,
"Evil is good, good evil", we were told.

Yet here, where nightly the great flare-lights gleam,
And murder stalks triumphant in their beam,
The world has wakened from its empty dream.

At last, O Christ, in this strange, darkened land,
Where ruined homes lie round every hand,
Life's deeper truths men come to understand.

For lonely graves along the countryside,
Where sleep those brave hearts who for others died,
Tell of life's union with the Crucified.

And new light kindles in the mourner's eyes,
Like day-dawn breaking through the rifted skies,
For Life is born through life's self-sacrifice. 4

Scott's theme here is significant. In a reversal of the pacifist argument, he believes that the war has turned people away from 'selfish ease' and 'pleasures manifold,' and back towards Christ's path and 'life's deeper truths.' The battered shrine has immense meaning for Scott, because the graves of soldiers have reaffirmed 'life's union with the Crucified.' It is also significant that Scott ends with the image of dawn: battle, and the self-sacrifice which punctuates it, has brought rebirth.

There is an interesting counterpoint to this theme in W.E. Elliott's short story 'The Crucifix.' Private Edward Tierney and his mates fall out for a rest by a roadside calvary, and Tierney notices a small crucifix about the chapel door. Though 'nothing of its significance penetrated his mind,' Tierney pockets the crucifix and eventually gives it to his chaplain in gratitude for the chaplain having covered his absence from the line. At the end of the story, Tierney and the chaplain are both wounded, but both are saved by objects in their breast pockets. The chaplain is saved by the symbol of his own faith, as the little crucifix stops a bullet that would have killed him. The irreligious Tierney, too, is saved by a symbol that is significant to him; in his case, however, it is a deck of card that stops the bullet and saves his life. 5

Nothing is here for tears
In studying Canada's memory of the war, one is struck by the persistence of an active discouragement of grief. Canadians were constantly reminded that mourning was not a suitable emotion, especially in light of the fact that the fallen had died in the battle of good against evil and that they had shared Christ's sacrifice by fighting his battles. 'We must not mourn our glorified dead,' wrote the father of a fallen soldier to his alma mater. 'The first pain and soreness of our loss are past. Let us think with pride on the grandeur of their sacrifice, on the noble triumph they have left for others.' 6 Even Anna Durie, who went to such trouble to try and bring her sons remains back to Canada from France, tried very hard to convince herself to banish grief by focusing on the meaning of her son's death and the beauty of his sacrifice:

"I Know a Field"

I know a field where star-eyed daisies blow,
In beauty, tranquil as the sleeping tides;
Where thin-stemmed poppies droop in fiery glow,
And the rich earth a richer substance hides.

I know a place where dreamless silence reigns,
Beneath a sky of scurrying, changing clouds;
Where the sun lingers, shade the verdure stains,
And the rare soil a rarer dreamer shrouds.

I know a grave where a young hero sleeps,
Who sank serene at radiant morn;
Tread lightly! Nay, 'tis only fool that weeps
For of his dust was a great nation born. 7

Readers will recall Durie's attempts to return to Canada with the remains of her son. I noted in the book that Durie's attempts were unsuccessful, but I have since learned that Durie did indeed succeed. I have not been able to discover precisely how she realized her goal, but Captain Durie's remains now lie in St. James's Cemetery in Toronto; he is surely the only Canadian to be killed in action in France but buried in Canada.

Few writings capture the discouragement of mourning better than an essay in a 1928 newspaper supplement published by the Armistice Ceremonial Committee of Canada. Entitled 'Canada's Garden of Memories,' it transforms the stricken battlefields into edenic paradises where any sense of sadness is obliterated by feelings of gratitude and joy:

In reverent mood we pass down the winding paths of Canada's Garden of Memories in France and Flanders, pausing here and there at places, the names of which are carved deep on the minds of three generations of Canadians. The first of these are St. Julien, Langemarck, Ypres, once contentious sections of 'No Man's Land.' We pluck with tender hands the 'thought flowers' which bloom here in such abundance and such fragrance that we are lulled to a sense of happy communion with the silent ones about us.

Traversing these by-paths, we pause next at St. Eloi, Hooge, Sanctuary Wood, Courcelette and Vimy Ridge. There is no pain here, nor regrets, where a few short years ago were laughter, joy, bloodshed tears; and there should be no tears now, except those of thankfulness that our cause was a righteous one worth fighting for - worth dying for. 8

This essay, only a part of which is reproduced here, was distributed to thousands of Canadian homes to mark Armistice Day 1928. It predates by only a few months the great war book boom which brought to Canada classics like All Quiet on the Western Front, yet the sentiments could not be more different.

The purified soldier
An important theme in the religious interpretation of the war was the belief that the war offered redemption. In the minds of many Canadians, battle was a purifying fire in which the individual would be remade in a finer form. Growing out of this notion was the reluctance to admit that the war had damaged the soldier: how could the soldier of Christ have been coarsened or brutalized by fighting God's battles? This, of course, was a common objection to the antiwar novels, that they portrayed the soldier as being ruined by war. This theme, however, emerged years before it was reinvigorated as a response to the war book boom. Indeed, Canada's memory of the war had long been unwilling to concede that the soldier who had symbolized Canada overseas and who had fought to save Christianity could be capable of malfeisance.

A common plot in postwar fiction, for example, turns on the veteran who has been accused of some heinous crime. In the end, though, it invariably transpires that the ex-soldier was unjustly accused or does something to redeem himself for his transgression.

Edward Trevor's 'The Escaper' 9 concerns Arthur Ferris, an ex-soldier who has been diagnosed with a terminal aneurism. He encounters another veteran, Harold Grierson, who has just escaped from prison, but any suggestion that Grierson was an ex-soldier with an evil streak is erased by the revelation that he was a twice-decorated war hero convicted for killing an obnoxious drill sergeant who had never been to the front but who delighted in tormenting real soldiers. When the two veterans realize they share a striking resemblance, a miraculous opportunity presents itself. The Ferris volunteers to take Grierson's place and return to prison, in the full knowledge that the aneurism will soon kill him. Grierson can then adopt Ferris's identity and live his life in peace.

Charles Dorian's 'Though the Heavens Fall' 10 is the story of ex-soldier Joe Emory, 'one of the one per cent who had fallen into criminal ways after the close of the war, while the 99 per cent sought honest occupations.' Emory kills a shopkeeper in a robbery but, because he is an ex-soldier, he cannot be portrayed as an incorrigible and hardened criminal. While fleeing the crime scene he realizes that a passenger train is about to crash and, without hesitation, risks his life to prevent the accident. Emory then turns himself in and turns over the reward money for saving the train to the widow of the shopkeeper.

Noble service overseas could excuse a multitude of sins, as a short play by Nova Scotian Sidney Webb demonstrates. Suspicion for murdering a woman falls on a veteran, who was believed to have used his service revolver. In the end, it transpires that the murder was committed in a fit of jealousy by a rival for the veteran's attentions. 11 The implication is clear: a man who rendered valiant service in France could not have been responsible for such a deed.

It made little difference that the reality rarely lived up to these inspiring ideals. In July 1919, the day after he led Ottawa's Peace Day parade, Victoria Cross-winner Filip Konowal was arrested and charged in the stabbing death of a Hull, Quebec, man. There was no secret evidence to clear him, no last-minute confession by a non-combatant, only the medical evidence that Konowal's mind had become unhinged as a consequence of war wounds. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity, and was institutionalized for the next seven years. Konowal was a real-life example of the ruined veteran, but in Canada's memory of the war his type was given short shrift. 12

Suggestions for further reading

Religion and the war:
• Stuart J. Brown, 'A Solemn Purification by Fire: Responses to the Great War in the Scottish Presbyterian Churches,' Journal of Ecclesiastical History 45, no. 1 (1994): 82-104
• Michael Gauvreau, 'War, Culture and the Problem of Religious Certainty: Methodist and Presbyterian Church Colleges, 1914-39,' Journal of the Canadian Church Historical Society 29, no. 1 (1987): 12-31
• Catherine Moriarty, 'Christian Iconography and First World War Memorials,' Imperial War Museum Review 6 (1992): 63-75

War memorials:
• Joanna Bourke, 'Heroes and Hoaxes: The Unknown Warrior, Kitchener and Missing Men in the 1920s,' War and Society 13, no. 2 (Oct. 1995): 41-63
• Susanne Brandt, 'Le voyage aux champs de bataille,' Vingtième Siècle 41 (1994): 18-22
• K.S. Inglis, 'Entombing Unknown Soldiers: From London and Paris to Baghdad,' Journal of Contemporary History 5, no. 2 (1993): 7-31
• Gary Oakley, 'The Australian War Memorial at Bullecourt,' Journal of the Australian War Memorial 23 (1993)

Footnotes
1. John Hundevad, ed., The Vimy Pilgrimage, July 1936 [Ottawa: Veteran Limited 1936], 117.
2. Edgar McInnis, The Road to Arras (Charlottetown: Irwin 1920), 16-17.
3. C.L. de Roode, Victoire! (Montreal: A.P. Pigeon 1919), 64.
4. Frederick George Scott, In the Battle Silences: Poems Written at the Front (Toronto: Musson 1916), 10-11.
5. W.E. Elliott, 'The Crucifix,' Canadian Magazine 59, no. 2 (June 1922), 147-50.
6. Mr Jackson to Upper Canada College, 28 January 1921, in A.H. Young, ed., The War Book of Upper Canada College [Toronto: Printers Guild 1923], xxiv.
7. Anna Durie, Canadian Magazine 57, no. 3 (July 1921): 196.
8. Armistice Ceremonial Committee of Canada, Armistice Day Ceremonial [Toronto: ACCC, 1928], 20.
9. Canadian Magazine 59, no. 4 [Aug. 1922]: 279-90.
10. Canadian Magazine 62, no. 6 [April 1924]: 427-34.
11. Sidney Pitt, 'Guilty or Not Guilty?' Acadia Atheneum 58, no. 1 [Nov. 1931]: 17-21.
12. Ron Sorobey, 'Filip Konowal, VC: The Rebirth of a Canadian Hero,' Canadian Military History 5, no. 2 [Autumn 1996]: 44-56.