A song for the soul
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Updated: November 04, 2009 7:00 AM
When Warren Sommer and Sheila Puls heard the first few bars of Souls of the Past, they were deeply moved.
Souls of the Past was composed by 17-year-old Kyle Marsh and his mother, Carolyn. The song is about remembering the sacrifice of those who gave their lives in war.
Kyle and 10 of his friends from Langley Fine Arts School will sing the song for the first time in public during the Remembrance Day ceremony at the Fort Langley cenotaph on Wednesday, Nov. 11.
Carolyn Marsh said she hopes that the song will not only honour veterans and become a symbol of remembrance, but also become a melody that transcends all ages.
She noted that only two or three of the singers have attended a Remembrance Day service.
She told the young singers: “We are going to see something quite different from what you are doing at school (for Remembrance Day).”
She and her son have been going to the Fort Langley service for the past four years, and it was during one of these occasions that the first of the music and lyrics formed in her head. She went home and jotted down her thoughts, and her son added to them.
It took 15 minutes to assemble the words and music.
“It was one of those things, I don’t know where it came from. It just came out,” Carolyn said.
Although this is not a school production, all singers are in LFAS’ senior choirs.
Sommer and Puls are on the planning committee for the Fort Langley Remembrance Day service. They invited Kyle and his mother to sing Souls of the Past in St. George’s Anglican Church hall.
“I was fighting back tears,” Sommer said. “The words are so wonderful and the tune very moving.”
Puls was equally touched. “When Kyle approached us and said he had written a song for Remembrance Day, I was a little hesitant,” she said.
“My father was a veteran, and Remembrance Day is special to me — only the best will do.
“As I listened to Kyle singing his composition, I had trouble holding back tears. His simple, heartfelt words were so meaningful.
“Here is one young man who really seems to understand that ‘we owe them a bit of our time.’ I knew immediately that the only appropriate place for this was during the act of homage, as all the wreaths are placed at the cenotaph.”
Next week’s service marks the 10th anniversary of a Remembrance Day service in Fort Langley. The first was attended by only two people, Brenda Alberts and Gordy Gillard.
In November, 1999, Gillard, upset that there was no ceremony at the cenotaph, sought Alberts’ support at a time that her husband, Kurt, was campaigning for mayor. She retrieved her father’s Navy Bible, and she and Gillard had an impromptu Remembrance Day service. She promised Gillard, now 86, that there would be a service the following year.
About 30 people came to the 2000 ceremony, and since then attendance has risen sharply. Alberts said she wouldn’t be surprised if 2,000 attended this year. She is on the committee with Sommer and Puls, along with Rev. Debra Hinksman of St. Andrew’s United Church and Rev. Pam Worthington of St. George’s.
Souls of the Past
Once a year we pause and reflect
For those souls we lest not forget
The bugle sounds, we wear poppies of red
But is one day enough for the dead?
Time to pause for a moment or two
Time to ponder just what we can do
To remember the souls now buried in holes
In lands far away from their homes.
Honour the souls of the past
They fought for a peace that would last
It was do and die, God bless they tried
So we owe them a bit of our time.
Time to think of the age of these men
Who not long before were five and ten
The sacrifice they made sent them straight to the grave
We must honour the lives that they gave.
They never lived in the world that they freed
They died for the people in need
And after they were gone, the rest of us lived on
Some of us forgetting their song.
Honour the souls of the past
They fought for a peace that would last
It was do and die, God bless they tried
So we owe them a bit of our time.
And the ones that came back bore the pain
With horrors of war in their brains
Their souls ripped out, and they all did shout
Never, never, never go to war again!
Honour the souls of the past
They fought for a peace that would last
It was do and die, God bless they tried
So we owe them a bit of our time.
Sing of freedom for you and for me
Raise your voices from sea to sea
When the bugle calls to a flag’s half mast
Honour the souls of the past
Let the souls live on now in song
To go to war again would be wrong
All around the world, strive for peace and good
Gives the souls of the past what we should.
SING for the souls of the past
They fought for a peace that would last
It was do and die, God bless they tried
So we owe them a bit of our time.
SING for the souls of the past
They fought for a peace that would last
It was do and die, God bless they tried
So we owe them a bit of our time.
We owe them a bit of our souls.
We owe them all of our lives.
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