24 November 2003

Remembrance Day

For a month now the little white boxes in almost every shop have been filled with red poppies.  The TV presenters, and celebrities all seem to be wearing the flower every single day.  They are remembering that in 1918, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day in the eleventh month, the world rejoiced and celebrated. After four years of bitter war, an armistice was signed. The "war to end all wars" was over.  

On the World Wide Web I found out that poppies are an international symbol for those who died in the Great War (WWI).  http://www.geocities.com/~worldwar1/default.html,

http://www.geocities.com/~worldwar1/index.html, http://www.sherylfranklin.com/holidays/veterans_day.html

After the Napoleonic wars in the early 1800’s the battlefields, naked and scarred exploded in spring with the blood-red flowers of the poppy.  A similar thing happened after WWI when the bombed lime-rich fields, white as chalk produced massive crops of volunteer poppies.  When John McCrae, a Canadian doctor wrote a poem (In Flanders Fields) about the poppies, they quickly became the symbol for soldiers who died in battle.

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below. We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields. Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields By John McCrae 1919

 

In 1921, Field-Marshall Earl Haig, the former Commander-in-Chief of the British Armies in France and Belgium and the principal founder of the British Legion, was so impressed by Madame E. Guérin's (of France) fundraising idea of selling handmade poppies to raise money for poor children in the war torn areas of Europe, that he gave approval for the British Foreign Legion to start the British Poppy Day Appeal to raise money for poor and disabled veterans.  The money raised from poppy sales today provides direct assistance for ex-service people.

As I thought about the “Great War” here, I was reminded of how the horror of war lives on in the memories of each passing generation…from father to son (and daughter) and then to his son.  Yet even here where war has been a way of life from the very beginning it seems no lasting lessons about peace have been learned.

The nightly news is filled with the senseless deaths in Iraq, and in other conflicts around the world.  The British seem to love to remember World War II especially.  Just about every night there is, as we call it, “The nightly dose of fearing the Germans” with programs on Hitler or one of the last two world wars.

I wonder when we will learn that the cost of war is ours…the little people because the people who send our children to war, do not suffer the same cost. 

Someday I hope we will be selling poppies to fund their war so that the real money we pay in taxes can go to make life better for those who truly need it.

Bertrand Russell, the British philosopher (1914) seems to be saying how I feel this “Remembrance” time of the year.  “And all this madness, all this rage, all this flaming death of our civilization and our hopes, has been brought about because a set of official gentlemen, living luxurious lives, mostly stupid, and all without imagination or heart, have chosen that it should occur rather than that any one of them should suffer some infinitesimal rebuff to his country’s pride.”

 

Annie Warmke and her family picked up stakes and moved to Hadleigh, England last August, after living in Senlis, France for two years.  She writes a weekly column on life in a small town.  Someday, in the not too distant future she intends to return to live at her farm near Philo, but for the time being she is a world citizen making friends in small towns wherever she goes.  You can be in touch with her through her email address:  annie@bluerockstation.com