Reflections on the changing symbolism of the red poppy.
“Support
our Heroes” the poster emblazoned with the poppy logo declared. On
it, a photo of a gun-carrying soldier in battle fatigues striding
manfully. How different, I reflected, to those earlier Remembrance
Day parades that I recall, at which those who really had cause to
remember collected in the cold and damp of dull November mornings to
truly spend the silence remembering: those they had known; the
horrors they had seen; the deaths too immediate and violent to bear:
the tortured wounds of those who only half survived. For them
remembrance was real. They knew war as a place of remorseless carnage
that made no distinction between the brave and the rest.
When
the wreaths were laid they were laid in grief, grief for all those
sons and lovers destroyed, for the fathers that never came home, for
the comrades and friends who suffered and died. It was the mourning
for the dead: it was the knowing of the darkness of war.
But
now those who truly remember are fewer each year and in place of
remembrance I see a pageant emerging. A ritual performance invoking a
pride in the warriors of now and of then, in their deeds of
destruction and death, and I am worried that we are blinding
ourselves to the tragedy of war and to the truth of it as the worst
of human failures.
The
soldier as hero is an icon which we should fear.
I
wrote this on Armistice day 2013. The shift in meaning has continued
since then, shifting from collective grief and remembrance towards
celebration and lionisation; associating the current military and its
operations with the sacrifices and losses of the past; encouraging
the viewing of the military as heroes regardless of where they are
deployed, or for what purposes. A subtle nudging of our critical
faculties: to question what they are doing is to question their
heroism - they are risking their lives for Britain – ask no more,
question no more, think no more. Framing the military as 'heroes”
stops us thinking beyond the label.
I
fear we heard much the same when any dared question the use of our
military to coerce recalcitrant populations throughout the length and
breadth of our once extensive empire. “Our brave soldiers”
defending Britain by wreaking havoc and violence on the reluctant
subjects of empire were portrayed as heroes, defending Britain and
its honour.
The
death of two British service personnel in Afghanistan announced
today, Monday the 12th of October, reveals that we still
have some 500 military personnel engaged there. We have also learned
that, in spite of parliament ruling out the deployment of British
forces in Syria, we have RAF personnel flying missions there by being
'embedded' with other forces. We also learn of British drone strikes
– some 200 so far this year according to Drone Wars UK – in Iraq
and Syria. [Can we regard drone strike operators as heroes, or do we
view them as office workers with unusual jobs?]. Are we witnessing
the normalisation of war? Making it just part of the routine
operation of government and no more exceptional than the collecting
of rubbish.
I
worry about the effect on the young of this shift in meaning from the
collective expression of grief and loss to lionising. Forces Watch
are concerned about the “embedding of military values in civilian
society” and I think the shift in the symbolism of the poppies
reflects this process. A process that means that war dead are no
longer viewed as victims of war but as heroes, as icons of manliness,
as those who sacrificed their lives; but those who served in the two
world wars knew there was little heroism involved but masses of
suffering – you did your bit and prayed to survive.
Last
week [Thursday 8th October 2015] it is reported by The
Independent on their i100 website that Mr Evans, a survivor of one of
the worst battles in Normandy in 1944, where 70% casualties were
sustained, has, according to the organiser from the local Loyal
British Legion, “offended many people” and that “most people
were horrified” when he read his anti-war poem at last year's
Remembrance Day Service, and so this year he will be banned from
reading it or any similar digression from their agreed script. His
poem Lessons read:
I
remember my friends and my enemies too
We
all did our duties for our countries
We
all obeyed our orders
Then
we murdered each other
Isn't
war stupid?
Mr
Evans is reported as saying: "I still don't know who I offended,
or what I said to offend them. I have no intention of upsetting
anybody. I'm a pacifist - and pacifism isn't supposed to upset
people."
The
young need to hear Mr Evan's words and need to see through the hero
images if we are to really honour those that died.
And
when we are encouraged to stand in silence at eleven o'clock on the
eleventh, we should also remember those millions who died at the
hands of our military in so many parts of the world, for only when we
have that real honesty about what our “heroes” have done can we
say that we have truly learned from their deaths.
