Armistice Day

Read a wonderful piece from Stars & Stripes on this:
http://www.stripes.com/what-we-lost-when-armistice-day-ended-1.160467

http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2011/11/11/glen-newey/virtual-death/

Even James Murdoch wore his poppy.

Given that people died just so that they could sign the armistice on 11/11 11:11 – I’ve always felt a bit uncomfortable commemorating it.

On cian’s point: I’ve been meaning to write something about “To End All Wars” which I don’t think even John has mentioned on CT yet; the utterly futile deaths between the agreement of armistice and the actual signing were in the thousands. (And then there was the horror that was just around the corner as the troops dispersed). I have commemorated it privately for many years (at 11 am central time which, even as I remember it, I think is faintly absurd); I was struck yesterday that Blain Neufeld wore a poppy while giving a talk in our department, something I have always wanted to do here but i) have never had an intact poppy and ii) have always wondered if it would seem odd. So, thanks to Blain, next year.

Worth noting that in the US, 11/11 is Veterans Day, on which all military veterans are honored.

Memorial Day, the practice of which has roots in the US Civil War, is the day in the US on which those who died in service are particularly honored.

To reiterate loveshack. They had cannons firing blanks on McGill campus (I am a student there).

I find it galling even offensive to have these shows of militarism in public institutions. The only reason I am alive is because my grandparents didn’t go to ww2 (got in a motorcycle accident and hid from the nazis respectively). We are still killing people. Try calling it what it is, I don’t know: fasco-capitalist day.

Not to mention the night before riot cops beat up and tear gassed students protesting in front of the administration building at McGill.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/story/2011/11/11/mtl-protestreaction.html

Initiatives like naming the Highway of Heroes fit seamlessly into this narrative.

jesus. I’m not whether I should be more appaled by the militarism, or the tackiness.

Though in the UK supporting the troops doesn’t for the most seem to extend to supporting the war. Small mercies I guess.

The campaign has taken an increasingly militaristic tone in Canada. From “remember the dead and the futility of war” it has moved to “honour the fallen”…

When I was in school in the 90s it was presented as the first, but it always felt like the second. People looked at you a bit funny if you brought up the non-Canadian soldiers who died in our wars. Civilians were never mentioned, and the tragedy of the millions of dead belonging to enemy countries was right out.

Our school’s commemoration of Remembrance Day was lead by the local Legion, a small collection of WWII veterans. They seemed sad, and old, and that somehow made the whole occasion more sombre.

I imagine the experience is totally different now.

People looked at you a bit funny if you brought up the non-Canadian soldiers who died in our wars. Civilians were never mentioned, and the tragedy of the millions of dead belonging to enemy countries was right out.

Welcome to our world. Here in the US, both Veteran’s Day and Memorial Day are simply celebrations of the United States military, and nothing more. And to the extent Memorial Day commemorates the war dead, it’s all about noble sacrifice and dulce et decorum est.

Yesterday, for every one of my Facebook friends who posted something along the lines of “Y’know, we’d do well to bear in mind just how 11/11 became a holiday in the first place,” there were five who posted “Thank you to our soldiers for protecting our freedoms and keeping us safe!” And there was no shortage of self-described “liberals” in the latter group.

Here’s a little something written by a veteran that provides a welcome counterpoint.

In the UK, remembrance itself seems to be taking an increasingly back seat to glorification of the military. There is a poster of Helen Mirren in the Tube captioned “the troops are the real stars”.

Given the strong linkage with the current military establishment, I struggle to see how a poppy wearer can avoid implicitly endorsing both (a) the unquestioning attitude of support for our next military deployment and associated tactics, and (b) the fairly strong pressure brought to bear on anyone who has the temerity not to want to wear one.

I’d love progressives to ‘take back’ the event – placing greater emphasis on the futility and tragedy of the lives lost in conflict. Owen and Sassoon should be in every newspaper. But sadly this would be rejected as compromising the bellicose agenda of the establishment. The white poppy movement also seems to have petered out somewhat.

Respectfully, some of the comments here miss the point.

Veterans Day simply has nothing to do with agreeing or disagreeing with any decision to go to war.

Instead it is about honoring those who served and serve. Without agreeing with any past decisions to go to war, one can agree with the necessity of a military to the existence of a state, and therefore with the necessity of men and women who are willing to serve in the military, and therefore, in recognition of the sacrifices made in the course of that service, with the justice of honoring that service.

Another note about Remembrance Day in Canada: we don’t have white poppies here, at least in part because the Royal Canadian Legion holds a trademark on the poppy that it is quite strict about.

Some group was distributing white dove pins this year, I doubt that will be very successful but it’s worth a try.

Wow, that story about Cameron is really bad. It would, indeed, have crossed my mind; maybe that’s the consequence of paying too much attention in A level History. What twits.

For me, the day is a day to remember, yes, people who fought and those who died in two wars, one of which was a horrendous waste of human life, the other of which was a terribly regrettable necessity. I do tend to think about the English. My grandfather joined up early in WWII. He was old enough that he would never have had to fight, and even when he joined up they tried to put him in the education corps, and then, when he wouldn’t, they tried to get him to be an officer. He believed that fascism had to be fought and that if you thought that you had to be willing to fight it. He was, at the time, wifeless and childless, so I suppose it was not irresponsible in any way of him to do that. He faced death often in the next six years for his commitment. I knew him long enough to know that he never recovered from the psychological toll it took, but also to know that he knew that he was right. I know I’ll never be called on to do that, and I don’t know if I could do it voluntarily.

Almost every town in England (France too) has a memorial in the middle, remembering soldiers who died in those two wars. There are no similar memorials to those who died in coal mines, or industrial accidents, or early from emphysema, or to the hundreds of the thousands of soldiers who were crippled or driven insane by their experiences, or the marvelous people who stood against the first war, imprisoned, persecuted, and sometimes executed for their efforts. I’m not sure I could have done the latter either. I welcome a chance to think of them, knowing that others are thinking of at least some them simultaneously.

In response to Anders; sure, that is a danger of poppy-wearing. Wear your old ANL badge on the other lapel, or CND, or if you are as pacifist as JQ (I know you’re not a pacifist John) a PPU badge. It would not be hard for the left to devise a small, but noticeable, insignia, to wear alongside the poppy, the meaning of which could be well understood. Thus putting pressure on, eg, Labour Party politicians, to wear that too.

Of course, we could all wear badges displaying our unconditional support for the heroin trade. Maybe Cameron et. al. could be convinced to wear them. Twits.

Now I am returning to some sort of sanity, I’ll try to write a little piece about To End All Wars. I defy you, John, or any of you with any sensitivity, to read the last few pages without crying. I couldn’t.

Remembrance Day will always belong to Eric Bogle

And while we’re at it; this is moving, and typical of the BBC’s approach to this, which is not at all militaristic; the story of an ordinary soldier, as told by that soldier (with help from John Hurt and the fabulous Thea Gilmore):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0171p6v/Victor/

If you can get hold if the BBC radio dramatisation of Len Deighton’s Bomber, well, it is stunning.

I’m not best pleased with the apparent poppification of everything in the UK, particularly as it seems to have come about as the last veterans of the Great War finally pass away, and as such, the trenches disappear from living memory.

Instead it is about honoring those who served and serve.

And yet the US seems to clear a lot of space in the calendar to do that throughout the year — or at least, put on the appearance of doing it through grand symbolic whatnots. July 4? ‘Honor the troops who fight for what the Founding Fathers gave us.’ Thanksgiving? ‘Honor the troops who aren’t home for Thanksgiving.’ Sunday Night Football? ‘Here’s a live link to Camp Dronestrike in Afghanistan, where lots of troops are watching the game.’

Nick S, indeed – and “the troops” are, of course, not being “honoured” at all with these things – they’re being used. Used to sell shit to the proles; used to demonstrate political toughness; used to show support for the troops so we can move on and forget about the wars our rulers are waging with our tacit consent. In a strange way this embrace appears to me to be a method of othering the soldiers who fight those wars – the logical step to take as all the other victims of those wars have already been declared to be the Other.

Jeez I hate this kind of drive-by commenting. If Peter T has something to say, say it. I’m not a liberal, but what exactly is it the leftists here are misunderstanding about war? Lack of reading Ernst Junger perhaps?

H P Loveshack@6: As far as I’m concerned, on Remembrance day, we should brood over human stupidity. It shouldn’t be yet another commemoration of the so-called “military virtues”. The army shouldn’t be allowed at these things.

This is exactly right.

The “Last Tommy”, who lived for peace.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrBv_r_X4Gs&feature=related

The First World War did what for the European people? It lead to the deaths of millions, with no substantive change in the government of any of them. Rosa Luxemburg had it exactly right: voting for war on the basis of nationalism was a betrayal of the trust placed in the social democrats for the voters.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. In German, Russian or Turkish, it turned out pretty much the same.

Oh yes I wasn’t trying to suggest Junger wasn’t on to… something. Or shouldn’t be taken seriously.

50-52: Wilfred Owen, who I read every Armistice Day. He deserves better than his reputation as an “anti-war” poet. Maybe he hated nationalism, patriotism, civilians but…

Apologia pro Poemate Meo

I, too, saw God through mud—
The mud that cracked on cheeks when wretches smiled.
War brought more glory to their eyes than blood,
And gave their laughs more glee than shakes a child.

Merry it was to laugh there—
Where death becomes absurd and life absurder.
For power was on us as we slashed bones bare
Not to feel sickness or remorse of murder.

I, too, have dropped off fear—
Behind the barrage, dead as my platoon,
And sailed my spirit surging, light and clear
Past the entanglement where hopes lay strewn;

And witnessed exultation—
Faces that used to curse me, scowl for scowl,
Shine and lift up with passion of oblation,
Seraphic for an hour; though they were foul.

I have made fellowships—
Untold of happy lovers in old song.
For love is not the binding of fair lips
With the soft silk of eyes that look and long,

By Joy, whose ribbon slips,—
But wound with war’s hard wire whose stakes are strong;
Bound with the bandage of the arm that drips;
Knit in the welding of the rifle-thong.

I have perceived much beauty
In the hoarse oaths that kept our courage straight;
Heard music in the silentness of duty;
Found peace where shell-storms spouted reddest spate.

Nevertheless, except you share
With them in hell the sorrowful dark of hell,
Whose world is but the trembling of a flare,
And heaven but as the highway for a shell,

You shall not hear their mirth:
You shall not come to think them well content
By any jest of mine. These men are worth
Your tears: You are not worth their merriment.

@Bob McManus

I’d never have found that on my own. It’s very much appreciated.

If life has taught me one thing it’s that I’m temperamentally unsuited to poetry criticism, but seemingly it hasn’t taught me well enough so I’ll note how the final stanzas layer ernestness over irony, with both readings maybe being equally valid. There’s the egotism of someone transported into novel plane of experience, but tempered by awareness of the irony the implicit brutalisation entails. There’s much more than style there — integrity, and universal or potentially universal truths about human beings.

Why is poetry of such importance not written today? It must be possible.

On a prosaic note, I’m fairly certain “whose world is but the trembling of a flare” refers to a participant in a nocturnal trench raid, probably Owen himself, being lit up in the middle of no man’s land. I can honestly say I can’t imagine what such a moment might be like. RIP Wilfred Owen.

Since we are on the subject of WW1 and poetry:

‘These fought in any case,
and some believing,
pro domo, in any case . . .

Some quick to arm,
some for adventure,
some from fear of weakness,
some from fear of censure,
some for love of slaughter, in imagination,
learning later . . .
some in fear, learning love of slaughter;
Died some, pro patria,
non “dulce” non “et decor” . . .
walked eye-deep in hell
believing in old men’s lies, then unbelieving
came home, home to a lie,
home to many deceits,
home to old lies and new infamy;
usury age-old and age-thick
and liars in public places.

Daring as never before, wastage as never before.
Young blood and high blood,
fair cheeks, and fine bodies;

fortitude as never before

frankness as never before,
disillusions as never told in the old days,
hysterias, trench confessions,
laughter out of dead bellies.

V

There died a myriad,
And of the best, among them,
For an old bitch gone in the teeth,
For a botched civilization,

Charm, smiling at the good mouth,
Quick eyes gone under earth’s lid,

For two gross of broken statues,
For a few thousand battered books.’

Does anything more really need to be said?

A letter home from Owen to his family:

For 14 hours yesterday I was at work –
teaching Christ to lift his cross by numbers,
and how to adjust his crown;
and not to imagine he thirst until after the last halt;
I attended his supper to see that there were no complaints;
and I inspected his feet to see that they should be worthy of the nails.
I see to it that he is dumb and stands to attention before his accusers.
With a piece of silver I buy him every day,
and with maps I make him familiar with the topography of Golgotha.

Remembrance Day certainly has changed in the UK. 10 years ago we didn’t really have the “poppy fascists” (the “he’s not wearing a poppy? he disrespects our gallant troops, he’s evil!” folk).

My mother told me of her experiences growing up in the 1930s in southern England. Her family used to go to the usual Sunday church service and parade to the war memorial, but afterwards her father (who was a medical orderly at the front in WW1 and lost many close relatives) quietly took his children up to the local war cemetery for German dead (presumably they were PoWs and sailors, otherwise I can’t explain why there would be a cemetery in southern England).

He did this to remind his sons and daughters that the tragedy of war was experienced by families on both sides. That thread of humanity remained with her through her life. I am amazed and impressed at the generosity of spirit of my grandfather, even though he had lost many friends and close relatives in WW1.

Of course, one key difference between WW1/WW2 and the current military adventurism of the UK is that WW1/2 were fought by the general population of the country mobilised into the armed forces because the standing army was quickly wiped out near the commencement of each conflict. Nowadays, I find I can’t care much if professional soldiers (professional? mercenary?) who chose a life of adventure going over to other people’s countries to shoot the locals find that those locals don’t like being attacked and fight back. It’s not my war, they’re the government’s army, not the people’s army. Not in my name!

As I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, we wouldn’t dream of mocking Remembrance Day, but there was none of the “poppy fascism” that demeans it now. And that was when there were many people alive with direct experience of the suffering and sacrifice of WW1/2. Few of those are left now, and I find the current Princess Dianaish hype both maudlin and slightly nauseating, a crying into their beer gesture. Wearing a poppy is the same sort of activism as clicking on an online poll; yeah, well done mate, why should I respect you for that huge gesture?

As I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, we wouldn’t dream of mocking Remembrance Day, but there was none of the “poppy fascism” that demeans it now

Worth noting that this certainly wasn’t true in the 1920s and 1930s. For a pretty good sense of the meaning of Armistice Day then, have a look at Dorothy Sayers’ “The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club”. Drivers who failed to shut off their engines during the two minutes’ silence were regularly beaten up.

Remembrance Day has a very long history in Canada and its observance shouldn’t be confused with support for militarism or the policies of the Harper government. I think it is quite appropriate for the community to take time to reflect on the wars of the 20th century and all the lost young men who didn’t live to grow old.

Ajay (63):
Worth noting that this [poppy fascism] certainly wasn’t true in the 1920s and 1930s. For a pretty good sense of the meaning of Armistice Day then, have a look at Dorothy Sayers’ “The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club”. Drivers who failed to shut off their engines during the two minutes’ silence were regularly beaten up.

Thanks, I’ll look it up. Without in any way wishing to condone violence against those who ignore the silence, I think that reaction would be more understandable then – imagine you lost fathers, uncles, brothers in the slaughter in trenches, or even fought in the mud and horror yourself, only a decade before, and you find others treating this small gesture as an irrelevant annoyance. But few people in the UK now have that direct experience now, for themselves or in their family, so they don’t have that personal hurt as an excuse; it’s unearnt selfish sentimentality.

A few years ago, there was a fashion for white “peace poppies”, against a perceived militarism of the red poppy. It was an interesting idea, but I felt it was inappropriate attempt to hijack someone else’s gesture, especially when many folk viewed it as a “war is horrible” remembrance rather than a “thank you troops!” thing. Any thoughts?