It was dead silent. Dead silent but for the occasional shuffling of boots. Together they stood and stared…stared at the remains of one man thinking of the others…all the others…in silence. The silence accentuated the realization that the oh so familiar murmur of the guns had stopped. The dull drone of the airplanes buzzing in the air above, gone. The battalion banner suddenly flapped and broke the serene quiet thereby alerting them to the absence of the tumultuous hum from the war machine that had always been there…slowly, progressively and devastatingly inching its’ way forward, closer and closer to the precipice from where freedom for those long held under occupation was finally in view. And they stood, heads bowed, eyes fixed on the ground. A note of cool air brushed past and through their solemn assembly. Together they stood in silence.

One hundred men standing together in the mud. As soldiers, they assembled in respect and in order before the remains of one man; a Major General of the Canadian Expeditionary Force. A leader of men, felled in action by an unseen enemy combatant. One hundred men stood as soldiers in their best, the best available, in the cold, in repose.

Unseen were the thoughts that flashed amongst the gathered. Thoughts of friends, mere days ago brethren in war, now dead. Four days of battle…438 men from their battalion. Through the foggy horror that beset their minds, they thought of their lost mates. Of regaled tales about mans’ best girls, taken from scented letters read aloud over and over…late into the evening, many evenings. Gone. Of recounted chronicles of lives back home…of tales of sweet, keen young daughters and fearless, intrepid sons now lost, stories muted and buried along with their brothers in the mud of Flanders. The familiar smiles of their mates, extinguished. Recalled cuts of cheer and laughter, left to the mercy of chance and fate. Brilliant flashes of better days momentarily recalled in the silence by the few as they stared in repose at the mud.

Together they stood in silence…in Remembrance. There but for the occasional flap of the banner, the breath of cool autumn air wafting through the columns of men, the shuffling of boots in the mud and the fateful return of the murmur of the gun in the distance the bugle sounded.

* Account of the funeral of Major General Lipsett, Oct 16, 1918 attended by officers and other ranks from the 116th Ontario County Canadian Infantry Battalion.

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