A Commentary On "Death So Noble"

Collective memory or myth refers to the combination "Ð'...of fact, wishful thinking, half-truth and outright inventionÐ'..." that form the perceptions arising from a shared experience. Death So Noble by Jonathan Vance is a well written and well received, as awards and book sales attest, examination of public or collective memory pertaining to Canadian participation in the Great War. Vance relates the myth that developed and was fostered during the inter-war years, analyzing why and how it came into being, who was responsible for its creation and promotion, and the rules of discourse when questioning its validity. This collective memory or myth, Vance says, was embraced and promoted out of necessity for many reasons; the myth was at once consolatory, explanatory, served as justification and was employed as a unifying or nation building experience for a very young country. Supporting his conclusions Vance employs a postmodern approach, including such diverse sources as war memorials, church windows, newspaper editorials, theatre productions, memoirs and more. This approach is utilized artfully, omitting the inherent irony and pessimism of the genre, while simultaneously opposing the conclusions of another prominent historian, Paul Fussell. Fussell, Vance asserts, applied a traditional survey of literary sources to reach the conclusion that the horrors of the Great War left behind a sense of futility and pessimism that had not accompanied war prior to this engagement. Vance contends the opposite. In fact, he says, by studying the perceptions of Canadians, as expressed in popular culture of the time, the collective memory of the Great War affirmed for most Canadians the optimism and faith in progress that were defining characteristics of the Romantic and Modern eras.

This optimism and faith Vance explains was born neither of thin air, nor simply a national naivetÐ"©, utility was the driving force behind the myth. A war resulting in 60,000 deaths and 170,000 wounded had to have meaning "beyond the defeat of German aggression," rather this supreme sacrifice hailed Canada's transcendence from colony to nation. Pulling together citizens from coast to coast, Canada had made her first unified stand as a nation, a righteous stand against the dark forces of tyranny and oppression. The individual soldier was no longer simply a military man, he became the personification of a nation. Interestingly, contrary to enlistment records, it was a nation of healthy, vigorous, outdoorsmen, rather than an army of clerks or factory workers. It was this mythic outdoorsman that served to heighten the contrast between an agrarian, peaceful Canada and a militarized, mechanized Europe. A nation of peace-loving, principled citizens could do no less than enlist their services, and earn their place on the world political stage.

International political acclaim however would have proved cold comfort to mothers, widows or sweethearts (precious little attention paid to fathers, brothers or friends), left behind to mourn their fallen. Consolation then was of paramount importance. The death of a loved one had to be framed within the context of something bigger to prevent those left behind from succumbing to abject despair. Common to all Christian faiths is the belief that Christ was sacrificed to absolve the sins of humanity. What more noble comparison could arise than the soldier as Christ? To grieve was acceptable but "by offering what was most precious to them, these people had partaken of Christ's sacrifice." Not simply an idea put forth to comfort those left behind at home, as a motif it appeared in sermons, paintings, speeches and dedications. Inherent in the parallel with Christ are the ideas of resurrection and ascension. Those 60,000 fallen could not simply be lying in cold ground somewhere overseas, delivery straight into the welcoming arms of angels was the only palatable result.

The prevalence of the soldier as Christ imagery could not be interpreted to mean that the spiritual were the sole beneficiaries or architects of the myth. The secular world had just as pressing a need to "conceptualize the war in a broader sense." For veterans an understandable desire to remember the more positive aspects of their war transformed into nostalgia or "a wistful yearning for days when life was dangerous and uncomfortable but was characterized by comradeship, selflessness, and egalitarianism, qualities that seemed all too rare in peacetime." Here too Vance takes aim at the intellectualist approach. It is all very well to examine the published writings of the literati to form a portrait of the general attitude of an era as Fussell had done. However, by considering the writing and actions of the unpublished veterans, by far the majority, a different picture emerges. Menus and programs from veteran reunions,