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Remembrancetide
Simonthepilgrim
Veteran
Sunshine and showers at our local war memorial today. Nobody in the young honour guard fainted - this year! The local Christian Dean droned as always and the cadet corps marching was a bit ragged.
It's very easy to mock the Remembrance Sunday memorials - I've done it myself. But I have also spent enough time with both active and retired military to know them as people.
So Remembrancetide has always presented me with a challenge. At 20 years old, my father was wounded on the Somme. He was doubly lucky: it was a 'Blighty' wound (meaning he was sent home to England) and he survived. My Uncle Jack was in Burma with Bill Slim in the 'Second Show'. The 1914-1945 conflicts are part of my family's shape. We wore poppies around Novenber 11 and were taught to take off our caps when passing a war memorial. We learned the smell and taste of sorrow and waste.
As a result, like so many of my contemporaries, I embraced pacifism and carried on attending the November 11th services. My pacfist friends continue to fail to understand. For them, the memorials and the services simply 'glorify war' and should be boycotted.
For me, they are an appropriate response, like the Holocaust memorials: a reminder and a time for reflection on what it could mean to be faced with that terrible choice. The more I learn about the life in the front lines, the more I believe that, like Isaac Rosenberg, many of those names on our memorials denote pacifists who had no other choice.
And, of course, the social anthropologist in me approves of ceremonies for the dead at around this time of year.
It's very easy to mock the Remembrance Sunday memorials - I've done it myself. But I have also spent enough time with both active and retired military to know them as people.
So Remembrancetide has always presented me with a challenge. At 20 years old, my father was wounded on the Somme. He was doubly lucky: it was a 'Blighty' wound (meaning he was sent home to England) and he survived. My Uncle Jack was in Burma with Bill Slim in the 'Second Show'. The 1914-1945 conflicts are part of my family's shape. We wore poppies around Novenber 11 and were taught to take off our caps when passing a war memorial. We learned the smell and taste of sorrow and waste.
As a result, like so many of my contemporaries, I embraced pacifism and carried on attending the November 11th services. My pacfist friends continue to fail to understand. For them, the memorials and the services simply 'glorify war' and should be boycotted.
For me, they are an appropriate response, like the Holocaust memorials: a reminder and a time for reflection on what it could mean to be faced with that terrible choice. The more I learn about the life in the front lines, the more I believe that, like Isaac Rosenberg, many of those names on our memorials denote pacifists who had no other choice.
And, of course, the social anthropologist in me approves of ceremonies for the dead at around this time of year.
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Comments
http://www.ppu.org.uk/poppy/index.html
It might be too late for this year but OK for next - I bought mine at the Quaker Meeting hall in Glasgow when I was over there last week - maybe approach your local Quakers?
So, very mixed feelings and very concerned for our lads in Afganistan and Iraq.
Sean O'Casey.
Right now I'm reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy (No Country for Old Men). It is set in a stunningly bleak post-apocalyptic world where nearly everyone and everything is dead, yet still the human spirit continues. It is both horrifying and inspiring at the same time. I think it points out the truth that we learn and grow the most in the worst of times, not the best.
Palzang
I read The Road straight after reading Jim Crace's The Pesthouse which treats a similar subject. I would strongly recommend it. And I sha'n't spoil the ending of the McCarthy for you but I'll be interested to hear what you thought of it (the ending, I mean).