Lest We Forget
November 12th, 2011 § 4 Comments
"We are the Dead/ Short days ago/ We lived/ Felt dawn/ Saw sunset glow."
It’s getting more pronounced every year, isn’t it? The annual ritual of poppy-wearing and not-poppy-wearing; the same old stories in the papers about this shop banning its staff from wearing the paper papaver rhoeas, that person on television flagrantly flaunting his absence of floral respect.
Is it just me or is there a growing sense of compulsion to wear one? A faint wrinkling of the nose by those who do, at those who don’t; a starker divide between those announcing their patriotism* in petal form and those either ignoring or abstaining from the public memento mori?
Every day on the way to work this year I have passed a large poster, eye-catching and hosting a simple message in bold black type: “We should be talking more about the courage of our forces fighting overseas.” (I paraphrase as the exact wording eludes me, but it’s close enough…)
Every time I pass it I’m tempted to add my own addendum. Yes, perhaps we should. But we should also be talking about the sickening effect war has on the combatants – the dehumanising, brutalising consequences of causing a death; the obscene expense of tax-payers money on illegal wars of aggression; the hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq that we, with our seeming dismissal of all qualms about war, have allowed to happen.
A mountain of blameless dead; the bodies of women and children disfigured and families tearing out their hair. This is what war looks like: Lest We Forget.
Her parents were shot in their car by soldiers at a checkpoint in Iraq.
Last week I interviewed a veteran of the Normandy landings. A twinky-eyed loquacious old soldier with a firm handshake and tales to tell of D-Day. “I’m lucky to be alive: Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition!” He said.
As I photographed him, he clutched an 80-year-old German camera (still working) that he had “liberated” from a bunker he’d cleared, after eluding the rake of enemy machine guns. “I feel sorry for those old boys fighting out there, in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan…” he said, unasked.
“Barmy, lying politicians sending young lads to fight in countries where they’d rather blow you up than shake your hand? It makes me sick. Never stay where you’re not welcome!”
Tomorrow I will stand next to him at a Remembrance Day service in Herne Bay, as I cover the event for the town’s local newspaper. He will be wearing a poppy, with pride. I will not. And I know for a fact that this proud, tough old soldier would never think less of me for not doing so, for I am remembering the dead (the living too) in my own way; with more than a little anger but no less respect.
That is the kind of mutual understanding, the absence of browbeating I would like to see stay intact, not a growingly sycophantic tendency — evidenced by Facebook feeds, newspaper leads and supermarket frowns at the unadorned chest — to wrap ourselves in the second-hand pride of the “boys” who are “keeping us safe” at such a high price to both themselves and the families of those they are complicit in killing, because one too many politicians told one too many lies that stuck in one too many heads and one too few craws.
*I know. Most people will say that is not what it means to them. And I have no objection whatsoever to anyone wearing a poppy. Should I repeat that? It’s laudable. But: Amid the milieu in which I find myself, it does not smack of either remembrance or lament; it reeks of unthinking support for soldiers fighting wars that I emphatically cannot support. And I would rather find myself lambasted as an ungrateful cad who deserves to live under Nazi rule (which I am not) than an uncritically acquiescing supporter of ignoble war.
I think you are confused, the wearing of poppies is not a symbol of patriotism but a symbol that we remember the fallen in two world wars (and sadly even after ‘the war to end all wars’, subsequent others). I agree with Daisaku Ikeda (SGI Buddhist leader) ‘war is barbaric’, I wear a poppy not with pride but ‘Lest we forget’.
I have no doubt I’m very confused. You think correctly. But I don’t think wearing of the poppy “is” any one thing. I’d guess everybody wears their poppy with a different thought in mind, much as those who don’t, have diverse reasons for not doing so.
My fear, is that it is becoming a growing means of signalling one’s patriotism and support for the armed forces and the conflicts they are currently engaged in; a symbol of solidarity with soldiers which vitiates critical discussion of what they are actually up to.
It continues to boggle my mind that the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan, for example, is not a more prominent part of our political discourse or public conversation…
Not being in England, I’m guessing that the poppy is similar to the yellow ribbon, often adorned with “Support Our Troops,” found here in the States — usually on the back of large trucks and SUVs. It too is a confusing symbol, as is the word “support.” Did we support the troops by sending them to Afghanistan in a “surge” that was unsustainable, and the effects of which are questionable at best? An old friend of mine from high school with three kids went over there and was blown apart by an IED. Is “support” believing that his death meant something? Or is it acknowledging that it was senseless, and that the only lasting effect will be his widow’s solitary sadness?
Thoughtful post, as always. Keep it up.
Cheers Ben, thanks for dropping by!
It’s a bit different (I should have clarified that for my handful of American and Korean visitors…) The poppy is worn to celebrate Armistice Day; the cessation of hostilities on the Western Front of World War I and the signing of the armistice between the Allies and Germany. The poppy appeal started as a way of raising money for ex-servicemen and women — poppies were the only thing that would grow on the ravaged battlefields of WW1.
(http://www.britishlegion.org.uk/about-us/history-of-the-poppy-appeal)
As such, I am being a bit precious by getting hot under the collar about it. It has become a day of remembrance for all who have lost their lives in war. And I donned one today out of respect for three old veterans of the Normandy landings with whom I got chatting. I didn’t want to inadvertently insult their fallen comrades by not wearing one at a memorial service.
But as I wrote above, it alarms me that it seems to be — and I’m going on a lot of Facebook activity among friends and acquaintances — increasingly worn simply to signify support for our armed forces *and* by a strange seeming default, the conflicts they are fighting. It also bothers me that where once it was something done by choice, now there is a growing sense of compulsion to wear one; a regular handbagging of those in the press who don’t.
I didn’t want to write some misguided polemic on “Why I don’t wear a poppy!” But just to point out some of the things that leave me faintly uneasy at the rise in “poppy politics”. The priest at today’s service was rambling on about “those who keep us safe” by fighting in Afghanistan… Exactly the sort of narrative I’d prefer to see critically challenged, not set in stone through a strange Syncretism of religious, militaristic and nostalgic narratives and sealed with a crimson petalled stamp.