Tomorrow is Remembrance Day

[intaglio]

When the people of the United Kingdom remember the fallen in wars. Originally it was meant to remind us, after the Great War, never again to indulge in the terrible slaughter that science, industry and unthinking patriotism can unleash. Because of this original intent Remembrance day is not marked by huge parades with carnival floats, fireworks and self congratulation; but rather with a somber march past of the military, from past and present; the laying of funeral wreaths of poppies at the Cenotaph in London and at the small, local war memorials you find throughout this United Kingdom. Because humans find it so hard to learn that pious intent to avoid further war fell by the wayside and more names have been added due to the wars that followed.

The small, wayside memorials tell more about the effect of the first and second world wars on the communities who had them erected than any histories. In tiny hamlets sometimes only two or three names are recorded of common soldiers who became uncommon heroes; in villages perhaps a dozen. Many times you will see the same family name repeated and you wonder at the fortitude of the mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, wives and children who lost so many of their kin. Then you remember, these memorians were your parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts.

Because of this I wear a poppy, not because of pride, but to remember. I remember the purpose of the memorials and the ceremonies, I almost hear their silent warnings against aggression and pride and false patriotism. I remember but it seems our leaders have forgotten ...

WWI started as a mobilisation when a fading empire wanted to look tough and no one had the will, the time or the communications to stop it. WWII, ultimately because a demagogue gained power in Germany and nobody was willing to risk another war to stop him. It may be that WWIII will be (has been?) started by a demagogue in control of a failing empire, if it does begin all of those bloody red poppies will have been wasted.

The following verse by Lawrence Binyon is often quoted in full or in part on war memorials

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

I do,

But I also remember the dark old lie Wilfred Owen destroyed in the light of his poetry

Wilfred Owen

Dulce Et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.