Thank You...How Can We Help?

When it comes to honouring our military, the standard lines which seem to reverberate within our national psyche are “Lest we Forget” and “They’re fighting for our freedom.” As important and genuine as they are, both phrases fail when it comes to our current bunch of combat veterans.

“Lest we Forget” generally refers to the fallen, to those who made the supreme sacrifice in laying themselves down for their nation and, more importantly, for their comrades. It’s also a phrase that is very much married with the First and Second World Wars, though it is still a deserving pledge for those who gave their lives in Afghanistan.

As for “They’re fighting for our freedom,” frankly Canadian soldiers have never truly fought for our freedom. The wars we’ve been involved in as a nation have leaned towards the freedom of other nation’s citizens. The Boer War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War and now Afghanistan, as well as the peacekeeping deployments Canada has volunteered into have all been on foreign soil, essentially for foreign citizens. Unless the 200^th anniversary of the War of 1812 leads to altered re-enactments by some rogue American militia, then it will have been quite some time since the North of the Americas was ever truly threatened.

With the Canadian military withdrawing combat forces from Afghanistan, we need to find ourselves a new expression to honour the courage and sacrifice of those who are coming home. While “Lest we Forget” is a sincere token for the fallen, it does little for the living because we DO forget, as well as ignore. The other line isn’t applicable, so let’s scrub that in general please. What we need as a nation is a way to bring these men and women back into the flock, a means of telling them we’re proud, offering heart-felt thanks for bearing the burden of fighting, killing and losing friends, and then reaching out a hand for each and every combat solider and military staff.





Having said that, “thank you...how can we help?” is a great start for our country to take. In the study On Killing, it is stated that “Societies have always recognized that war changes men, that they are not the same after they return. That is why primitive societies often require soldiers to perform purification rites before allowing them to rejoin their communities.” It is further stated that such rituals allow soldiers to rid themselves of the stress and guilt associated with combat (especially related to the act of killing), and that “...above all, his community of sane and normal men welcomed him back.”

This is why thanking our soldiers and offering our support as a nation, as communities, and as individuals is so essential. We need to reassure them that what they did WAS right, regardless of our moral stances on war, killing, the counterinsurgency programs, Afghan politics, the Taliban or anything else. I would like to see parades for our veterans of Afghanistan, nationally as well as at the local level. It’s all well and good that we honour the fallen with the Highway of Heroes, but what of the living who must re-enter a society that knows little of what they were exposed to, or what they struggle with mentally, emotionally and physically. If we fail to honour our soldiers, to reach out a hand of support and help to our warriors who have guarded Canada’s values, then we will have shamed ourselves; the brave who have stood on guard for thee deserve a nation willing to do the same for them.