"By the Ghost Light" and "The World Remembers" by R.H. Thomson

Book features are something I rarely post. My school projects are way behind the stern of this canoe. The last book I promoted was by my friend John Vaillant, "Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast"  published in 2023. Vaillant's award-winning book is actually a primer on the science and sociological aspects of climate change disguised as an action tale about the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfires.

My goal was and remains to encourage people to read and better understand the climate catastrophe. If you can only read 25 pages in 2024, please see Chapter 20 of  "Fire Weather". Those pages summarize a couple of centuries of science and explain a crucial five lost decades of action due to corporate greed and political pandering for power and profit. 

Also see "Big carbon's strategic response to global warming, 1950-2020". Big Oil knew the truth in the 1970s but picked wealth and power over Greannhouse Earth and everything therein. Simply evil.

R.H. Thomson's "By The Ghost Light, Wars, Memories, and Families" is another must-read, especially with Remembrance Day in the offing.  It is a slow read for me. One does not want to miss any nuances in the words. Sometimes it takes two or three times for me to savour a sentence and really grasp the message. 

The dedication "To all those who our wars lost, and then forgot" says it all. 

I am of the same vintage as Robert Holmes Thomson who most will remember as Jasper Dale from "Road to Avonlea". But R.H. Thomson is more than a talented actor as displayed throughout the 331 pages of  "By The Ghost Light". Mr. Thomson has even made it his mission to try to make "The World Remember" - an "attempt to name every soldier who lost their life in the First Great War" regardless of which side they fought for. It might be an impossible task in the face of politicized histories and bureaucracies.  

Historian Johnathan F. Vance agreed with Thomson's goal saying: "We must never lose sight of the fact that history is not the history of nations or ideologies but of people."

R.H. Thomson

Thomson's story is also our tale. We are the Baby Boomers whose grandparents and parents fought in those Great Wars. We were the lucky ones whose mothers and fathers survived, returned home, and were able to build a life. "The Lost Boys" who R.H. Thomson also writes about, did not make it home alive. 

Those who fought the Second Great War have been called the Greatest Generation - and rightly so. A generation of youth answered the call while other siblings remained home to keep the farms and industries working. The homestead was maintained by their parents who might have fought in the First Great War, dreading the arrival of telegrams or any message from the government.

      Amos, Ken and "Nels", my Father, 1942     

"Thomson" could be replaced by any one of hundreds of thousands of Canadian surnames. My family, the "Chadwick’s" saw three sons fight overseas and thankfully, all returned to build lives after witnessing the horrors of war. 

Humans are slow learners and history does repeat itself starting with the quote on the opening page of "By The Ghost Light".

"There were a great number of young men who had never been in a war and were consequently far from unwilling to join this one." Thucydides, 5th century BCE.

Private David Starrett is also quoted at the top of page 142:

"So the curtain fell over that tortured country of unmarked graves and unburied fragments of men: murder and massacre: the innocent slaughtered for the guilty: the poor man for the sake of the greed of the already rich: the man of no authority made the victim of the man who had gathered importance and wished to keep it. We were said to be fighting to stop future war, but none of us believed that. Nor ever will." 

The honest eloquence of Private David Starrett regarding the First Great War was true in the 5th Century BCE and is still sadly accurate today. 

My wartime parents gifted my brother and me with a "Leave to Beaver" type childhood. My older brother was Wally. To achieve that life after living through the catastrophe of the Second Great War is remarkable and evidence of a strength of character that is seldom witnessed.

My father did not talk about the Second Great War. He confided that he never turned over bodies on the battlefield except once, only to discover his cousin.

"Nels" in school at 10 years of age in 1934 to a seasoned soldier of just 19 by 1944. Remember.

My father shared one last memory just before he passed in 2001 - something he had never even told our mother. "Nels" and his buddies were lined up along the front when a German machine gun strafed the trenches. His friends on either side of him were killed by mechanized warfare. Lives were forever lost and tragic memories were etched indelibly in the mind. His chin was quivering with the 57-year-old nightmare just like mine when they had to shoot the "Old Yeller". My father would have been 100 years old for this 2024 Remembrance Day. 

R. H. Thomson wisely alludes several times to the current world situation more than a century after the first November 11th Armistice Day. Politicians and leaders have not learnt any of the lessons of the past. War is simply a tool to be used by those in power. 

On page 177 Thomson proposes the following "four articles of faith (for war as a Policy Tool):

1. that the destiny of nations can be determined on the battlefield;
2. that battle is where heroism and manhood are expressed;
3. that the warrior's pride is the tribe's pride; and 
4. that you secure your right to be a nation through victory. 

Warlords and tyrants live by that last one."

All of these "articles of faith" are national in scope and under the control of a very few of the power elite. The stories of the people like my father who comprise history are not even considered, although they pay the full price for the useful "Policy Tool". Shame!

The political and industrial elite continue to accrue unfathomable wealth through authority and graft. They wield their power to remain in their lofty positions apparently above democratic laws - unimpeachable regardless of their crimes. Their simple playbook has not changed over the centuries:

 lie, confuse, conceal, cheat, obfuscate, distract, divide and conquer. 

There is a better way and the hope remains that a real peace which is not just the absence of war can be found. R. H. Thomson mentions the Kellogg-Brand Pact on page 288. It was signed in Paris in August 1928 by almost fifty nations and "renounced war as a policy instrument and sought to solve disputes through peaceful means." Apparently "the agreement was so unrealistic and had no enforcement mechanism, it is no wonder that no one remembers it." Peace need not be unrealistic. 

One simple solution that all can and must exercise is to be well-informed and armed with an inquisitive and analytical mind. Read and don't believe everything you hear or see! Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be incredibly and convincingly deceiving! And always vote wisely.

R.H. Thomson's "By The Ghost Light, Wars, Memories, and Families" put the 20th Century into a context that is tragic but makes sense. Powerful lobby groups with opaque funding continue to undermine facts about the climate catastrophe, established science and the reality of their motives. War is simply another tool in the power elite's bag of tricks. Which explains why history continues to repeat itself.  

The common theme found in both "Fire Weather" and "By The Ghost Light" is that power corrupts and those responsible for their narcissistic deeds lacking empathy, are not held responsible. Captain Gilbert, an Army psychologist assigned to watch the defendants at the 1945-1949 Second World War Nuremberg Trials observed:

"Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy."

These are important messages and both books are very special and deserve to be read.

This November feature of "By the Ghost Light" by R.H. Thomson is being posted on the approximate first anniversary of its publication, and in time for Remembrance Day on November 11th, 2024. Reminiscing should really be a year-long event lest history repeat itself. 

At the risk of appearing cynical, I have witnessed November 11 employed by pious-faced power elite posing for a few sombre minutes pleasuring the photo opportunities while showcasing the "four articles of faith" mentioned by R. H. Thomson.  War remains as a "policy tool" in 2024.

I prefer to remember all year but certainly during November. The stories of the war victims that come to mind include everyone but also nature and the environment. Whales were mistakenly shot and depth-charged during the Second Great War for fear that they were submarines. My moments of remembering always avoid warmongers and politicians.

Farm life near Napanee before reporting for war, 1941. Nels was 16.
Thankfully Nels was not one of R.H. Thomson's "Lost Boys"

Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick