Memorial Day Recalls that Thin Line

There’s a very thin line between life and the hereafter. The most damning question to dog survivors of combat is “Why him and not me? What makes me different? Why did he die and I lived?” There is an eerie foreshadowing; an ominous pale that overtakes those going into battle that seem to know their time on earth is fast closing. They ask their comrades to send home to their loved ones things they cherished. Then, as if closing the book of their life, a shell or bullet speeds into their body. They are gone in the twinkling of an eye, off to a better world beyond this veil of blood and tears.
Through the years Memorial Day seems to hasten upon us. There remains a wish, unfulfilled to date, that there will be no more wars, no more military funerals for young men and women, taken from their loved ones too soon. At the Cape May County Airport, across the street from Naval Air Station Wildwood’s Hangar No. 1, is the Forgotten Warriors Vietnam Museum. I paid a visit to its grounds May 5 as the sun was setting.
Vietnam was “my” war, I sailed its waters, walked its beaches, but came safely home. The question lingers: Why was I spared and so many others of my age were taken? My cousin, a Marine, lost his life in Vietnam. Why?
Among 21 names of Cape May County sons on the memorial wall at the Forgotten Warriors Vietnam Museum, Marvin G. Tozour from Mayville stood out from the rest of those heroes. We went through Middle Township schools together. He was 20 and a corporal in the Army serving with the 101st Airborne Division.
In service for a year, Tozour’s Vietnam tour began March 27, 1968. On May 13, in Thua Thien, South Vietnam he became a casualty and died of his wounds. Why? His name also appears on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington and Wildwood on Panel 60E Line 4.
Again on Memorial Day many veterans will puzzle at the reason why buddies were taken and they lived to enjoy the fruits of liberty in the land they stood to guard when they, too, were just in their teens.
One hundred years ago this month, that same mystery of the thin line between life and the great beyond puzzled a Canadian physician and gunner. The War to End All Wars was raging in Ypres, a part of Belgium better known as Flanders.
He was Lt. Col. John McCrae from Guelph, Ontario. Although a doctor, he was first an artilleryman with The Royal Regiment of Canadian Artillery. He wanted to serve his country in the fight against the Germans shooting, not healing. Fate, it seemed, had other notions, and his orders were that he be a healer not a killer.
A 22-year-old former student of McCrae’s, Lt. Alexis Helmer from Ottawa, was also called to service in that same place. Helmer was well-liked by his comrades, who nicknamed him Prince, because there was a Russian of the same name who would have worn the next crown.
Reports have it that a German shell directly hit Helmer, instantly tearing his body to pieces in Flanders May 2, 1915.
The following is from the Canadian Broadcasting Company’s report on his death, “But his death had a major impact on a Canadian medical corps doctor, Lt.-Col. John McCrae. The pair had met at McGill University in Montreal before the war when McCrae was a professor and Helmer was a student. One day after Helmer’s death, McCrae wrote the most iconic war poem in Canadian history: ‘In Flanders Fields.’”
The poem touched many hearts after it was published in Punch magazine in December 1915. The poem’s author lived three more years to save as many young lives as he could, given the terrible conditions under which he labored. “McCrae died of pneumonia Jan. 28, 1918 and was buried with in Wimereux Cemetery, just north of Boulogne, France, not far from the killing fields of Flanders which he immortalized,” the CBC site reported.
On May 25, Cape May County will gather in various places to recall many examples of valor displayed by young soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen. Their thoughts will be on young men like Marvin Tozour and the 20 others from this county who fell in Vietnam. They were doing the job they were called upon to do by a nation that later despised them, but then came to revere their service.
With certainty, those attending the solemnities on Memorial Day will wear tiny red paper poppies, sold to raise funds for veterans. They will be small reminders of the flowers that grow even to this day on those killing fields in Flanders, and of thousands like Helmer who died, yet we never knew them.
It would be well to honor their memories with some humble, silent prayers even as the world races by on its way to cookouts and beach openings.
On the centennial of McCrae’s immortal poem, it is worth reciting silently or aloud, today or on Memorial Day. It has become the sentiment of so many as we remember those who went to war and never returned:
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.
–John McCrae, May 1915