WE WILL REMEMBER THEM

A SERMON FOR REMEMBRANCE SUNDAY

There’s a story told about the legendary Australian chaplain of World War I, William “Fighting Mac” McKenzie.  Fighting Mac, despite being a very strict Salvation Army Padre, was loved by his soldiers because he was always with them in danger. Though often ordered back, he would always reappear at the front line to encourage the living and minister to the dying. During one particularly savage battle, he came across a badly wounded soldier, who was obviously beyond help. The soldier was Catholic and knew he wasn’t going to make it, but there was only this Salvation Army chaplain to turn to as he lay dying.  But the soldier cried out in his anguish, “Padre, do you know a Catholic prayer?” And Fighting Mac replied with great tenderness,“I think I do, my boy.  Say this after me, son: ‘God be merciful to me a sinner... I now lay my sins on Jesus.’” With great difficulty, and obviously in pain, the boy nevertheless whispered the words as the Padre Mac held his hand, and with the peace of God upon his face the young soldier passed away.

The number of deaths in World War I was beyond our imagination.  Total deaths, military and civilian, are figured at somewhere between 15 and 19 million, making World War I one of the deadliest conflicts in history.  It was known at the time as the War to End All Wars, and the horrors of that conflict should surely have made it so.  But then came World War II, and so it went on.  Our military are still dying in appalling circumstances overseas, as man’s inhumanity to man goes on unabated.  So many men in uniform, leaving mothers and sisters and sweethearts behind, to march bravely through the ages into battlefields of terror.  Today we remember those men.  We should never forget them, nor the horrors they witnessed, nor the mental and physical suffering they endured.  We will remember them.  

Our Catholic soldier who was ministered to by the Salvation Army Padre was one of the lucky ones of World War I.  He died relatively quickly and, thanks to the kind words of a Protestant Chaplain, hopefully in the state of grace.  Many, however, died suddenly, without the opportunity of repenting.  Today, we commend their souls also to God, hoping in his mercy for those who died for their comrades and their country.  Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori – “It is a sweet and honorable thing to die for one’s country.”  And ‘greater love,” says our Lord, “hath no man than that he lay down his life for his friends.”  May God have mercy upon them all.

We who have never fought in war can never begin to imagine what it must have been like, the experience of deliberately exposing our poor frail bodies to hundreds of bullets hissing by, shrapnel flying through the air cutting through limbs like knives through butter, fiery gasoline sprayed from flame throwers and igniting us like human torches. 

In the First World War there was the additional horror of poison gas.  What went through a soldier’s mind when he saw the green clouds of poison gas slowly advancing on his position in the trenches?  They knew its terrible effects, and quickly learned how best to avoid it.  The men who stayed in their places suffered less than those who ran away, as any movement worsened the effects of the gas. The lower to the ground you stayed, the worse it was, as the gas was denser near the ground.  The worst sufferers were the wounded lying on the ground, or on stretchers, and the men who moved back with the cloud.  But if you didn’t manage to put on your gas mask before the green cloud reached your mouth and nose and eyes, it meant terrible suffering and one of the most painful deaths imaginable.

The first poison gases used were chlorine and phosgene, which attacked the lungs, filling them with a bubbling mass of burning acid that choked the victim.  But the most deadly and effective weapon devised by the Imperial German Army was mustard gas.  It actually wasn’t a gas at all, as it is not actually vaporized, but dispersed as a fine mist of oily liquid droplets.  When it contacted the skin, these oily droplets caused burning blisters, victims’ eyes became very sore and clogged to the point of blindness, and they began to vomit. Mustard gas caused internal and external bleeding and attacked the bronchial tubes, stripping off the mucous membrane. This was extremely painful. Fatally injured victims sometimes took four or five weeks to die of mustard gas exposure. It’s estimated that about 93,000 soldiers were killed by poison gas.

One nurse, Vera Brittain, wrote: "I wish those people who talk about going on with this war whatever it costs could see the soldiers suffering from mustard gas poisoning. Great mustard-coloured blisters, blind eyes, all sticky and stuck together, always fighting for breath, with voices a mere whisper, saying that their throats are closing and they know they will choke."

So awful was the suffering caused by poison gas that it was forever banned by international agreements after the war.  Today, we can look back at this most shameful episode in human warfare. War is already bad enough, but the horrors of World War I surpassed the limits of tolerance of even the most hardened generals and politicians.  The Armistice, signed a hundred years ago today, was meant to be a contract between nations that would prevent any repetition.   When we hear rumors of wars, let us remember the casualties of war.  Let’s put a face to just one of those poor soldiers gasping for air for weeks on end from the effects of the poison gas, waiting for that final struggle as their throat closes over one last time.  The face of your son perhaps, or your grandson.  Or your own face.  And let us pray for peace.