Remember the Great War and the Spanish Flu

(I thank Google for informing me this day was called Rememberance Day in English :D)



Today I finally understood where the English expression "at the eleventh hour", meaning "at the very last minute, when it was almost too late", comes from. It was at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, 1918, that the Armistice was signed, bringing an effective end to the First World War, then called the Great War.
We wear the poppy to honor those who fought then because those red flowers tended to invade the fields in the aftermath of battles, like a vivid reminder of the blood of the soldiers who died there. That is what inspired to Major John MacCrae his famous poem, In Flander Fields; its most famous lines are still commemorated today by having become the motto of the Montreal Canadians.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders Fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders Fields.
I am not and will never be in favor of war, but I would never belittle the efforts and sacrifice of our soldiers. They fought in Europe decades ago so that we in North America would remain safe, some of them still fight today for a cause they believe to be right, and today we remember and honor their sacrifice. To those men and women who fought to make our world a fairer and more secure one, I say thank you and send a promise that they won't be forgotten. Je me souviens.
I will also spare a thought and a prayer that we will also be spared another great threat that ravaged our world in the aftermath of the Great War, that plague that was then called the Spanish Flu. One of its characteristics is that, just like the current A H1N1 virus, it was especially virulent to people under 40, who are normally the most resillient against such viruses.
The Spanish Flu killed between 25 and 40 million people worldwide, 4 times the number of people killed by the war itself. A large number of soldiers came back home only to die of the disease, in a terrible and merciless travesty. The virus raged around the glove for about a year, made 1 billion people sick, made the life expectancy drop from 59 to 35 years in the US, killed numerous famous personalities such as Guillaume Apollinaire, Gustav Klint and pope Benoît XV, and provoked the only cancellation of the Stanley Cup final ever. Let us remember those times and hope the current epidemic will never be given the chance to reach such proportions.