The Tribune

From a speech by Governor General Sir Arthur Foulkes, Thursday, November 8, at the opening of the new headquarters of the Bahamas Branch of the British Legion.

You know that famous saying, ‘Old soldiers never die they just fade away.’ Well, our old soldiers have been fading away as the years slip by, as indeed we all must.

But we must forever preserve the memory of our old soldiers and of the gallant service they gave in times of great crisis for the world.

Some time ago many war veterans were still with us. These were men who had gone overseas in the armed forces of Canada and the United States but especially of Great Britain.

On Remembrance Day they gathered, backs ramrod straight as they stood at the Cenotaph and remembered those who had made the supreme sacrifice, and those who were previously with them but were now gone.

Some of the men who wore the uniform come vividly to mind. Who can forget Audley Humes and Maceo Coakley, Cyril Tynes and Basil Johnson, and all the others who were once here, who proudly occupied this space? We cannot forget them.

Yet there are some familiar faces still with us: the Rev Matthias Munroe, Ormand Poitier, Charles Fisher, Percy Strachan and others. Their names may not be daily on our lips, but they are still here, and some of them are still making contributions to the well-being of our society.

Without question this building will go a long way in helping to sustain and preserve the history of the Legion, to keep in perspective what Bahamian men – and some Bahamian women too – endured in foreign lands almost 70 years ago.

In the days leading up to Sunday, many people around the country have been purchasing and wearing poppies, and in doing so we hope that each and every one of them will reflect on the meaning of this demonstration.

But you, old soldiers, know the meaning because you lived it. You endured the discomforts and some of you actually saw the frightful consequences of war.

A Canadian officer and doctor, Major John McCrae, had just presided over the burial of a young soldier in France in World War I.

He was deeply troubled by the carnage he had seen on the battlefield, and, as he looked over the fields of Flanders where so many other young men were buried, he was struck by the blood-red wild poppy flowers which had sprung up from those graves and were blowing in the wind.

Right there and then he wrote his famous poem which made the poppy the symbol of those who had made the supreme sacrifice. Permit me to read this most famous of poems of 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.

Fellow citizens, friends, supporters of the Bahamas Branch of the British Legion, let us not break faith with those who died and let us not break faith with those who survived but were willing to make the supreme sacrifice, our old soldiers.