KAMSACK — Poor air quality June 1 due to the smoke from forest fires across the Prairies forced the annual Kamsack Decoration Day service from the Legion cenotaph at Riverview Cemetery into the Legion Hall.
Lt. Karen Tourangeau, president of the Kamsack branch of the Royal Canadian Legion, served as parade marshal for the service, which included members of the Kamsack air cadet squadron, Kira Salahub as trumpeter and Keri Lindsay on bagpipes, who led the procession into the hall where a small cenotaph had been positioned.
Flag bearers included: Lynn Baillie, the Canadian flag; Marg Ratushny, the Red Ensign; Diane Belovanoff, the Union Jack; Judy Green, the Saskatchewan flag; Dianne Smutt, the Legion banner, and two cadets carried the Treaty No. 4 flag and the cadet banner.
Standing with the flag bearers was Cst Ben Berg of the Kamsack RCMP detachment.
Rev. Stephen Ruten, the Kamsack Legion’s chaplain, delivered the homily during the Decoration Day service. | Photos by William Koreluik
“We need to imagine we’re at the cemetery, surrounded by names of those who went to war,” said Rev. Stephen Ruten, Legion chaplain, in the homily which followed the singing of O Canada, a scripture reading and the singing of Nearer My God to Thee.
“In peace, sons bury their fathers; in war, fathers bury their sons,” Ruten said, quoting Herodotus, an ancient history writer.
“A moving fact of the great wars of history, including the Second World War, which ended 80 years ago this year, is how young those were who died in war,” Ruten said. “What might they have become and accomplished had they lived even another 10 years, from their 20s into their 30s?”
Quoting Jacques Brault, a Canadian who wrote about a family member who had died in the Second World War, Ruten said: “I remember you, my brother, lying forgotten in the earth of Sicily. I know you are dead; your 20 years swaying in the blasted July weeds. There is only one name on my lips, and it is yours. You did not die in vain.
“If we lost a brother at war, his name would be the one on our lips,” Ruten said. “It’s estimated 60 to 70 million people died as a result of the Second World War, including military personnel and civilians.
“Canada lost 45,400 military members. We can’t have all their names on our lips, but we do remember, and honour their sacrifice.
“War, with its sights and sounds, leaves deep wounds on the psyche of those who live through it. Just a few years ago, a soldier from this area of our province, working in intelligence, was overwhelmed emotionally with videos and images from a conflict in the Middle East he worked with. His colleagues were also deeply affected; one committed suicide, overwhelmed by those images he had to view, images of cruelty and horrors taking place as they watched from a distance. This young man decide he had to leave the military once his friends and co-worker had ended his life.
“Who knows until there’s war how deep human depravity and cruelty can go? A hundred years ago in the First World War, a soldier and poet named Wilfred Owen wrote a poem with an old Latin saying as a title: ‘It is sweet and honourable to die for one’s country.’
“He expressed publicly the nightmares he had over the use of chlorine gas,” Ruten said, quoting excerpts from the poem.
Quoting General Dwight Eisenhower, the supreme commander of the Allied Forces in the Second World War, Ruten said: “I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can; only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.
“I know war as few other men now living know it and nothing to me is more revolting,” Ruten said, quoting General Douglas MacArthur, who had served in the Pacific theatre during the Second World War. “Its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a method of settling international disputes.”
A German crew pushing through France toward the coast shortly after D-Day stopped in a little town, Ruten said. They hung young men by the neck from light posts all through town for all to see and fear. They stopped the hanging only because they had run out of ropes.
“War is terrifying for civilians too.”
God sets boundaries and has countless invisible forces to command and Jesus said He could have called 72,000 angels in a moment to rescue Him, but chose instead “to die for our sins.
“I am grateful to Jesus for that; I hope you are too.”
God lets nations and their leaders go their way and many of them like to make war, he said. Jesus said not to be surprised or alarmed at this. God sets boundaries to enable survival and Jesus Himself will intervene by a dramatic return to earth.
Ruten said he was reminded of a married couple who were at odds with one another and told them that “if you can’t love this person as your spouse, then love them as your enemy.
“Jesus commanded it and that love looks the same for both,” he said. “May God help us in this world with its many wars between nations and more conflicts between people near each other; that through Jesus’ forgiveness for us when we ask and through His strength given to help us, we might ‘be children of our Father in Heaven’ by following with Jesus’ love in Jesus’ steps.”
Following the homily, wreaths were laid. Cst Ben Berg laid a wreath on behalf of the Government of Canada; Mayor Beth Dix, on behalf of the Town of Kamsack, and Karen Tourangeau, on behalf of the Legion branch.
Lt. Karen Tourangeau, Legion branch president, laid a wreath on behalf of members of the branch. The two cadets with her are F.Sgt Halo Tourangeau and F.Cpl Aliyah Cymbalisty.
After the sounding of The Last Post, a silence and The Rouse, Tourangeau recited the Act of Remembrance.
Lt Karen Tourangeau, president of the Kamsack branch of the Royal Canadian Legion, performed the Act of Remembrance during the Decoration Day service.
“The members and veterans of Kamsack Legion branch No. 24 thank you for your presence and participation here today as together we remember the people who laid down their lives for freedom and for those veterans who have died since the war and whose bodies are buried here in the veterans’ cemetery and Riverview Cemetery,” said the program distributed at the service.
The service concluded with a Benediction, a closing prayer by Ruten and God Save the King.
It is expected that within a week, members of the Kamsack air cadet squadron will be “decorating” the veterans’ graves at the cemetery with poppies.
Persons attending the service were invited to a potluck supper.
