Memorial Day

May 25, 2026,

Greetings from the descendant,

My grandfather was in the First World War. He was the first to enlist in his little village, a crossroad in the vast emptiness of the Saskatchewan prairies. The people in that place were proud of him, and one other young man who went with him. I imagine there was a party in a barn somewhere to see them off, and then a long train ride, and then, war.

The story I was told was that he walked across most of Canada, having emigrated from England as a young man. He was looking for work. Why he paused in this place is lost in the threads of our family mythology.

And so, he went to war. I wrote those words and felt the finality of our family. Felt the end of us. No marriage to Katie, no baby daughter who would one day marry another immigrant boy from Scotland, no houseful of Smith kids who would go on to change the world.

James Bromhead went to fight in the barbaric slaughters of his time. The conditions were closer to the battles of the revolutionary war than to the conflicts we see today.

When I was a young boy, I watched my grandfather shaving, standing in front of the little bathroom mirror with his shirt off. I asked him about the scars in his back, and he told me a kind version of what they were. He let me put my fingers in the hollows where the bullets went into him.

Those marks in his flesh, softened by healing and time, and years of eating good food and drinking Stroh’s beer, were the topography of my grandfather’s life.

My grandfather was left for dead in the relentless mud where he fought. He was ruined by the bullets and shrapnel that had shredded him and he fell into the earth where nearly all of his comrades had already died. And that is the moment, the finality I felt. The end of us.

For many months, everyone who knew him believed he was gone, swallowed into the morass of war. The reports from the front told all there was to know, except the truth. He was dragged from one field hospital to another, and finally to a place where he could be saved from the wounds and infection that would have ended him. The fragments were removed, the skin sewn up, a patchwork on his back, that one day a five-year-old boy would explore with the tips of curious fingers.

James was not buried in a mass grave, not forgotten in a field of dead strangers, not shipped home to Canada in a box to be honored by the few who knew him. He survived, and in time made his way into a new life in the U.S. where a miraculous confluence of events led him to Katie, and to their children, and to me, and my children, and theirs.

Memorial Day is dedicated to honoring people who died in the line of duty, often in war. I am lost for words to decry the horrible waste of humanity this way. I also respect the sacrifice, and I am grateful and humbled by what others have given. I am glad we have one day to remember and honor these heroes, but it won’t be enough, not without really feeling what loss is like. This morning, I felt the finality of my grandfather, and what that could have meant for me.

There is a moment in time where James Bromhead becomes one of millions who died in war, and that is the end of him, and of us. Feel that for a moment, and mourn the loss of him, and all of us who followed him in this creation. There was a time when none of this happened for me, and now for you.

Years ago, my mother told me that after the war they named the village in Saskatchewan after my grandfather. I never considered that story seriously, but finally when it was possible I looked and found out she was right. Bromhead, SK, is a ghost town now. Everyone who ever knew my grandfather is gone, but I respect the intention to honor his courage, and the action he took to live it out.

But that is not how James will be remembered. Not by an empty town or gravestone or an obituary or eulogy or a parade. He will be remembered, known, because of us. His heritage, the respect we give him, is in our mirrors. It is in the lives we live.

James Bromhead didn’t die in the war, and so the world is changed. I am writing this here so you can feel that difference with me, how one man might have stopped living in a muddy battlefield, and wiped out unimaginable possibilities in his lineage. Maybe this way we can all know the loss of those who didn’t survive, and feel the pain for all the generations that were changed.

Hope this finds you honoring,

David

This essay was written by the author and does not include Ai content.

Copyright © 2026 David Smith