November 11

Today is Rememberance Day in Canada. People honour thse lost in the wars from the past. Very important day for me and my family. My greatgrandfather faught in World War 1, and his son, my Grandfather in World War 2, they were lucky enough to come home. This year my grandfather passed away, so this Rememberance Day is a very special one to me and I would like him to know that I am praying for him and every other Veterian out there. This is to honour the fallen.

In Flanders Fields
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.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

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.

This is a little story about a young soldier who was preparing for his death.
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Young soldier prepared for his WWI death 11/11/03
By MOIRA BAIRD, The Telegram

Carl Brokenshire

On the last day of his life, a 20-year-old Canadian infantryman wrote a letter to his mother just in case he was killed in battle the next morning.

James Carl Brokenshire was reported killed in action the next day, Nov. 18, 1916.

He carried the letter with him when he and the rest of the 38th Battalion went over the top of their trench along the Western Front — something he had eagerly awaited since joining the infantry two years earlier.

The letter was sent to his mother, Jane, in Toronto, where she read his matter-of-fact words about his impending death. It arrived, along with the official notification of Carl’s death, in January 1917.

“If I am to die for my King and Country I will die bravely and I want you not to worry or grieve but just to think that I died for home and I have done my duty,” Carl wrote.

“I am prepared to go to eternity so Mother I am not at all afraid to meet the Germans. … Mother dear don’t worry, but always think that my son has done his duty.”

Sealed with a kiss

Carl signed his letter with 25 X’s, each representing a kiss.

He also asks his mother to “tell my brothers and sisters that I have always loved them and tell (girlfriend) Alice that I thought of her before I died.”

Carl spent the night before battle in the reserve trenches near the Somme River, awaiting the order to “take out a line of Huns,” as he described it.

His unit, known as the Bath Bombers, was the second wave of men sent to face German machine-gun fire. Armed with grenades, the bombers were responsible for attacking enemy trenches.

Ten years ago, Jim Brokenshire Sr. found his uncle Carl’s letter in the “family archives.” It had only surfaced with the deaths of his aunts.

“I choked up,” he said.

Jim Brokenshire, who has lived in Newfoundland since the late 1960s, was a pilot navigator instructor during the Second World War.

“I was surprised at what clear, concise handwriting he had,” he said. “He was probably sitting perched in a trench some place writing this.

“You can see there is a kind of a fatalism about it. They’d taken a bad pasting before that in that sector, and the German machine-gun pillboxes were all over the place.

“He knew that if he survived that it would be a miracle.”

In those days, infantrymen were sent to face machines-guns fired by the Germans from well-protected pillboxes.

“They smartened up later on in the war,” said Jim.

Carl was 18 when he joined the army.

He trained in Prospect, Bermuda before being sent overseas to the Front. His worst fear was that he might spend the rest of the war on that Caribbean island.

“I don’t think we will ever leave the island,” he lamented in a May 19, 1916, letter to his brother Howard, whose 204th Battalion was a year behind in training.

“He was dying to get overseas,” said Jim. “Going overseas was a great adventure. Nobody thought about getting killed. At that age, you think you’re indestructible.”

Howard — Jim’s father — also served in the Canadian infantry during the First World War. Although Howard was wounded, he survived to fight again and finally returned to Canada in 1919 with the rank of captain.

“(Carl) was the only one in the family that got killed,” said Jim.

Carl Brokenshire is buried in a military cemetery at Courcelette near the Somme River.

His death coincided with the last days of the Battle of the Somme — a bloody, almost five-month campaign in which the British, Newfoundlanders, Canadians and other allies advanced just eight kilometres, at a tremendous cost of life.

That battle began July 1, 1916, with the decimation of the Newfoundland Regiment at Beaumont Hamel.

When the Battle of the Somme finally ground to a halt in the rain, sleet and snow of November, Beaumont Hamel had been captured, along with Regina Trench, Courcelette, Thiepval and Ancre Heights.

The dead and wounded on both sides of that one battle totalled more than 1.25 million men.

http://thetelegram.com/storyimages/ns1nov11.jpg
Carl Brokenshire

This is for my Pop
http://www.geocities.com/deuse7/pop.html

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Another Leaf has fallen, another soul has gone. But we still have God's promises, in every robin's song. For he is in His heaven, and though He takes away, he always leaves to mortals, the bright sun's kindly ray.He leaves the fragrant blossoms, and lovely forest green. And gives us new found comfort, when we on Him will lean.
http://www.c-core.ca/icpmg/bbattery.jpg

*Lest We Forget*