The Ming Report

THE RELENTLESS HARVEST

November 11, 2004 - It was the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month and the guns went suddenly silent stilling the cacophony of war. Men who were there described the event as a world gone suddenly deaf; the silence almost painful to ears inured to the beastly roar of battle. There was a pause, they said, a moment of unbelief and then sound returned. There, in the grime and mud of the trenches they heard the call of a meadow lark accompanied by the chirp of crickets. One, a Sergeant of Marines, a tough hard-bitten veteran of Chateau Thierry stood and wept, tears rinsing away the grime of the Valley of Death through which he had come then led his men, unarmed, to meet and embrace the men emerging from the other side of no-mans land who had made their way through that same valley.

It was the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month and they told their stories from the flag draped steps of the Court House and a small boy perched on the mouth of the Civil War cannon on the corner listened as they marked the end of the Great War; the War to Save Democracy; the War to End all wars.

Of course as they spoke and we gathered at the Courthouse there was another war raging. In the Ardennes and in the Pacific the beast was again at large. Again men hunkered in holes to avoid the sounds of death raining down upon them. But it was Armistice Day and we came together to celebrate the birth of peace and listen to grandfathers tell their tales of war that day in 1944.

Sixty more years have passed and that small boy perched at the cannon’s mouth is now himself a grandfather. The American Legion still sell fabric poppies but no one is left to remember Flanders’ Fields. So many more have joined the ranks. Men who fought at Anzio and Okinawa and Inchon and Hue and at Basra in 1991 are there this year. No more do we celebrate the end of war but glorify war’s eternal beginning and mark its relentless harvest of lives. It is no longer Armistice Day as we gather at the Courthouse. It is Veterans’ Day where we mark the lives of those we have sent to confront the roaring beast.

The beast roars once again in Fallujah; in Baghdad; in Ramadi; in Taji and Mosul and Tikrit; and in Samarra as Death’s scythe reaps the relentless harvest. At the eleventh hour of this eleventh day of this eleventh month we have made so many more to remember; so many more souls for whom to pray. There are not enough poppies growing in Flanders’ Fields to sweeten the air. There are not enough larks singing in Flanders’ Fields to drown out the guns. There are not enough graves to fill to satiate the roaring beast of unholy war.

When will be cry, “Enough”? When will we turn the earth with plows to plant flowers of peace instead of with spades to dig graves for the dead? When will the relentless harvest be finished? When will the roaring beast fall silent that we may hear the song of the lark once more?