Ottawa, Monday, November 10, 2008

“I cannot speak of the war, for I do not know the words that could make you understand.” So writes a soldier to his mother in Claude Guilmain’s film.

In that letter, as in each of the letters that we will hear, what is left unspoken is as powerfully evocative as the words themselves and weighs heavily on our hearts.

Between the lines—those hastily dashed across the page or those clashing along the battlefront—there are bodies reduced to fodder for the guns; unbearable suffering; the cold terror of impending death; untold devastation; on and on, without end.

There is courage beyond all comprehension; the disbelief at still being there; the letter desperately hoped for; the hope of one day seeing loved ones again; friendships born in the trenches, for life, until death.

There is the devotion of nurses and the commitment of all those civilian volunteers who supported our soldiers in countless ways, at times onto the very battlefields themselves, at times making the ultimate sacrifice.

And there is the worry that gnaws at loved ones back home; the relentless fear of receiving bad news; the absence to which you never grow accustomed; the life that must go on, in spite of everything.

In hearing these letters, which are the substance of the film you are about to see, I was often reminded of the faces and the words of the mothers, fathers, life partners and children whom I have stood alongside on the tarmac, at CFB Trenton, when the bodies of our soldiers who have fallen in Afghanistan are repatriated.

Between the lines are mingled their voices broken by sorrow, their bodies bent by grief, their lives forever changed, the words that go unspoken.

And it is as though the infinite pain of those women, those men and those children echoes the pain of the thousands who came before them, in one of the bloodiest centuries in our history.

As though it were a single cry from the very heart of humanity. A single wish, a single hope: that the forces of creation triumph over the forces of destruction.

What did they write, between the lines—all those people stricken with grief, all those soldiers who never came back, all those servicemen and women whose bodies and souls have been wounded? I carry their letters in my heart.

When the Armistice was signed, the whole world thought it had seen the last of war.

And yet today, 90 years later, our soldiers are again leaving their parents, children, loves and friends behind to help others struggling under the yoke of violence and oppression.

Let us not forget them, and let us also think of their families in this month of remembrance, when we call to mind the memory of all those soldiers who, in the prime of their lives, paid the ultimate price for freedom, our freedom.

Thank you, Claude Guilmain, for having filled this powerful, magnificent film with words and silence, helping us to understand the essence of that unspeakable, inconceivable, profoundly human and horribly inhuman part of war.

Enjoy the film.