What We Missed

Tuesday, 12th May Started early this morning and after marching to Mackintosh's, a distance of about 20 miles, we bivouacked for the night; and just at dark a scout rode in with news that our men that afternoon had charged Batoche and taken it, scattering the rebs. in all directions. The news was good indeed, but we felt we ought to have been there.

Almost two months
since I left home.
Paperwork botches and
lack of arms, equipment.
Train to Port Hope, then
to Kingston for our first
ragged parade. Snowstorm
in Fort Henry, training indoors:
then railing westward on steel tracks, broken
by marches. I'll never forget
sleeping in three feet of snow
when the tracks ended at Dalton,
or the 23 mile march across the ice
of Lake Superior: seven hours in a blinding
blizzard, over soft snow. Frigid sleigh rides,
moonlight marches in 30 below, the luxury
of a Pullman Sleeper. The hell
of prairie exposure; sleepy
steamer ride north on the river.

All this to guard supplies and hay,
and miss the final battle by half a day.
***
What We Saw
when we came out of the caves
blinded by sun and sudden silence:
our village over-run by soldiers.

Near the rifle pits, Damase Carrier, his leg
at right angle to his body, rope around his neck, still tied
to the tail of a horse grazing on a bush. He'd been dragged
around the field - they thought he was
Riel.

Calixte and Elzear:
Mme. Tourond kneeling
beside their broken bodies. Smoothing
their hair, bending soundless
to the ground.

Our grey-haired Elders who should have died
in their sleep, stretched before us bloodied
on the field.
Michel Trottier and Isidore Boyer.

Jose Vandal - 75 years old - both arms
broken when he came forth from the rifle
pit. His shirt bloomed roses from a bayonet.

One of the soldiers gave a salthard biscuit to my toddler.
One of the soldiers raped my dark-haired doe-eyed daughter.

Those who could
grabbed their children, turned to the banks and fled.
Those of us with nothing left
began to tend the dead.