Hot Takes & Second Hand Smoke

keeping the faith

Memorial Day is different this year. A pandemic has swept the globe and here in America, as I write this, more than 98,000 souls have lost their lives. Our nation’s flag has flown at half-mast since Saturday to honor the dead from Covid 19.

Today it flies at half-mast in remembrance of men and women in our armed forces who lost their lives defending our nation.

Another symbol of this day is the red poppy. It significance comes from the poem, In Flanders Fields, written by John McCrae during the first World War.

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 learned the first two lines from my mother many years ago when I saw the paper poppies given out by veterans on Memorial day. They have been a powerful symbol to me ever since.

Over the years the words “keep the faith” have come to mean a great deal to me. I learned the phrase from Senator John McCain when I worked in the U.S. Senate. It was writ large when I joined the Navy. And is manifest in the work of Ed Nicholson (Capt USN Ret’d) and Project Healing Waters Fly Fishing.

There was a poem, We Shall Keep the Faith, written in November 1918 by Moina Michael responding to McCrae’s poem. It was her pledge to “keep the faith.

Oh! you who sleep in Flanders Fields,
Sleep sweet – to rise anew!
We caught the torch you threw
And holding high, we keep the Faith
With All who died.

We cherish, too, the poppy red
That grows on fields where valor led;
It seems to signal to the skies
That blood of heroes never dies,
But lends a lustre to the red
Of the flower that blooms above the dead
In Flanders Fields.

And now the Torch and Poppy Red
We wear in honor of our dead.
Fear not that ye have died for naught;
We’ll teach the lesson that ye wrought
In Flanders Fields.

Recently, I was asked if my use of the phrase was a reference to religious faith. I said, “Not really, for me it is a reference to carrying on in honor of fallen brothers and keeping true to the oath I swore.

So today is a day to remember the fallen, those values we hold dear and to renew the pledge to forever “keep the faith.”