Remembrance Day

75 years since WW II ended and 102 since WW I - and then all the smaller conflicts as well. Anzac Day is the main commemoration here, but there is always observance for Remembrance Day. Lights dimmed in shops and shopping centres, and certainly a minute's silence in courts and schools. We've already left some flowers on the local memorial, and weren't the first to do so.

How will you observe it?
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Comments

  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    75 years since WW II ended and 102 since WW I - and then all the smaller conflicts as well. Anzac Day is the main commemoration here, but there is always observance for Remembrance Day. Lights dimmed in shops and shopping centres, and certainly a minute's silence in courts and schools. We've already left some flowers on the local memorial, and weren't the first to do so.

    How will you observe it?
  • At the risk of starting an unhelpful discussion, I have to say that we have a problem in Britain as we're not sure whether to observe Armistice Day or Remembrance Sunday (the Sunday nearest to it) which rather dilutes things. This though may be of interest: https://www.cardiffbus.com/remembrance-day
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    We observed it in church on Sunday, with Binyon's Ode, Last Post, silence and the Reveille. There will be a similar service today at the Cenotaph in the city and at war memorials across the country.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    Could a Kind Host please delete this duplication>
  • For us in Canada, 11 November is the principal observance. Tomorrow, I'll be at home and watch the observance on television from Ottawa. (I don't know what shape it might take.) Normally I attend the observance at the University of Toronto (alma mater) at Soldiers' Tower, and have done in all weathers, but not this year, though the weather is glorious for November. There is no other day of the year that my pride in belonging to the Commonwealth is stronger than this day. We wear our poppy on our lapel, and at the end of the service quietly place it on the cenotaph or by the memorial wall.

    Interestingly, last week there was a controversy. Whole Foods is an élite grocery chain - owned by Amazon - in North America; so élite that it's known as "Whole Paycheque". They instituted a new "health and safety" uniform policy that forbad the wearing of the poppy for Remembrance Day. The poppy, even among people with no particular connection to the military, is a very sensitive thing in Canada. We honour the dead, and the living, who have served. It was astoundingly tin-eared of WF. First they backed down a bit, and said that they'd donate CAD$8,000 (yep, that's all, nationwide) to the Royal Canadian Legion Poppy Fund. Then, the House of Commons passed a unanimous resolution condemning WF, and the Premier of Ontario said that he would introduce a bill that would prevent the forbidding of the wearing of the poppy. WF was at a loss. They had no clue that they had so pissed Canada off. They have backed off entirely (I don't know how much they're now pledging to the Poppy Fund), apologised, poppies all around, but there are now boycott movements fomenting.
  • Merge?
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    If a kind Host (is there any other variety?) could, it would be helpful, especially given your detailed response on the other.
  • BroJamesBroJames Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host
    Merging needs Admin powers. Hosts can only split. I’ve put in a request.

    BroJames, Purgatory Host
  • BroJamesBroJames Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host
    The two threads need merging needs Admin powers. Hosts can only split. I’ve put in a request.

    BroJames, Purgatory Host
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    Thanks
  • BroJamesBroJames Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host
    edited November 2020
    I’ll be going into the local primary school. It’s on the site of the former grammar school, and its grounds include a memorial pavilion. The children in the oldest class will hold a short act of remembrance. Our main one in the community has usually been on Sunday afternoon with British Legion, uniformed organisations and band, but it was cancelled this year. We had a short online act of remembrance at 11.00 before our online Sunday service.

    I still find the First World War statistics horrifying. This community lost 1 in 12 or 13 of its adult men, about 1 in 6 or 7 of those of potential military age. And in reality the losses were concentrated in a smaller age band.

    I’m glad I didn’t live a hundred years ago. My own boys were 18 in 2013 and 2015 respectively.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    Pangolin Guerre - thanks for that detail. Anzac Day remains the main observance here, a declared public holiday, major marches in large cities, and small ones in country townships. The march in the neighbouring suburb to ours is only a couple of hundred metres, alongside the park to the war memorial where the service is held. Similar marches would be held across the country.
  • Martin54Martin54 Shipmate
    edited November 2020
    11 of us from the street stood for the 2 minutes, I like to think that's typical. Only one was of WW2 vintage. She sat.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    The statistics are terrible. Over 60,000 young Australians died, when the national population was under 5 million. The proportion in NZ is even more, with a population around 1 million and and over 15,000 killed.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    Covid forced the abandonment of public events on Anzac Day this year. Rather than gather together, we stood at the front of our houses at 6am, each holding a candle. The son of neighbours played the Last Post and Reveille on the bugle. It was very moving, just as small services in townships are more moving than the large march in the capital cities.
  • BroJames wrote: »
    Merging needs Admin powers. Hosts can only split. I’ve put in a request.

    BroJames, Purgatory Host

    Is this related to why fusion is so much harder than fission?
  • You are merged.

    DT
    SoF admin
  • PG wrote:
    There is no other day of the year that my pride in belonging to the Commonwealth is stronger than this day. We wear our poppy on our lapel, and at the end of the service quietly place it on the cenotaph or by the memorial wall.

    I love that tradition with the poppy.
  • I think what comes to my mind on ANZAC day especially is the close relationship between us and the Kiwis. Rather than the Commonwealth, I think about our alliance with the USA, and the Americans who died fighting off the Japanese in the oceans and on the islands to Australia's north and east. There are a multitude of things to remember.

    Service in the Armed Forces and in auxiliary units has always been self-sacrificing, whether in a just cause or not. I see soldiers, nurses and others as serving me, personally, not the ideal of Empire or Nation. I want to respect our servicepeople. I am very disturbed by the allegations of murder laid at the foot of our SAS in Afghanistan. The report into this has not been released yet. It disturbs and angers me because the accused, if guilty, have besmirched the reputation of our military collectively.
  • I lead worship at our church on Sunday. Normally we might expect some of the Rainbows and Brownies, with assorted parents or grandparents. But, this year just our regular half dozen congregants, which meant I didn't get myself into trouble (excluding the technical problem of having my notes on a tablet that wouldn't work, forcing me to read from my phone instead). With people who don't normally attend church, I might have had a reaction to standing up front with a white poppy (in addition to the red) and lead a service that was a call to peace and reconciliation, to nations not seeking to be richer, greater (again), more powerful than other, a call to build bridges and knock down walls. That we honour those who died on all sides by working to do all we can to stop young people having to go to war, to butcher and be butchered, ever again. Rather than military traditions of bugles and the last post, I included a peace-bell (recorded when I was in Japan). And, certainly avoiding any other elements of jingoist nationalism or glorification of war and the sacrifice others made (so, hymns did not include the abhorrent "I vow to thee, my country")
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    White poppies vs red is new to me - what's it about please? Red, whether real more fake (more usual) are all that I can remember ever seeing.

    I agree with you about "I vow to thee, my country", but it's very rarely heard here. The Last Post and Reveille of course.
  • In the UK, white poppies are distributed by the Peace Pledge Union, and have been since the 1930s.
    White poppies commemorate all victims of all wars, including wars that are still being fought. This includes people of all nationalities. It includes both civilians and members of armed forces. Today over 90% of people killed in warfare are civilians.

    White poppies symbolise a commitment to peace and to finding non-violent solutions to conflicts. A hundred years after the end of the “war to end all wars” we still have a long way to go to end a social institution that even in the last decade has contributed to the killing of millions. By struggling for peace and opposing current wars, we reassert the original message of remembrance: 'never again'.

    The white poppy challenges attempts to glorify or celebrate war, as well as nationalist narratives of remembrance that focus mainly on military victims on one side. By encouraging us to resist the normalisation and promotion of military values at remembrance time, the white poppy helps build a culture of peace.

  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    Thank you. I have no memory of those ever being used here.
  • I wear both red and white poppy.

    As I knew that Remembrance would be very different this year, I decided to do something that has been on my to-do list for some time.

    I had, over several years, been compiling notes on the men and woman whose names are on the WWI war memorial at church. There was a copy in the church vestibule. This year I did more research, tidied it up a lot, and self-published it as a 28 page booklet, with all proceeds going to church funds.

    Researching the First World War during Covid was oddly intense. Our parish had a population of 2,500 in the 1911 census - there are 81 names on the memorial. But beyond that, the huge effort of those doing the work of two at home so that one could enlist, the constant appeals for knitted socks, or cigarettes for the troops, or eggs for the military hospital, or money for the YMCA huts in France, the facing of practical problems - our church windows were too large for black-out shutters, and so evening services had to stop - the extent to which, for four years people lived completely altered lives, was sobering to realise at a time when we are struggling with the much lesser restrictions of lock-down.

    There is a standard narrative that new opportunities for paid employment opened up for women but in my parish, farmers were instructed to recall adult daughters from paid work away from home, so that they could do farm work at home and release their brothers to fight.

    In a neighbouring parish, two brothers ran the village Post Office, general store and cobblers, and both tried to claim exemption, on the grounds that one had to be in the Post Office / shop while the other was delivering telegrams. They were told that as their shop was next to the village school, they could just get one of the school children to leave class and deliver the telegrams; the telegrams informing families that one of their sons had been killed in action. I tried to imagine one of my own kids at age 12 or 13 leaving their classroom to do that, and I just couldn't.

    I think I'll take a stroll past the war memorial this morning.

  • Top work, NEQ!

    This year I've been running a commemoration on Fartbook, of those who died "in the dark days that Britain stood alone" - choice of words deliberate, I have a few friends who won't like my choices, which is why I chose them!

    So far we've had the first resident of Wickford, Essex, to die - in a Bavarian artillery regiment, my gt gt Uncles commemorated on the same memorial as him, an American volunteer in the Polish forces who died at Arnhem, another German officer, a Polish "Rat of Tobruk" serving in a Czech Unit, a Bengali at Monte Cassino, Noor Inayat Khan and an African killed on the SS Mendi. Tonight I will commemorate Canadian George Lawrence Price, killed at 10.58 on 11/11/18, and buried within sight of the graves of casualties from Mons in 1914. Tomorrow, and last, I will commemorate Billy Bruce, the Knotweed's great uncle, killed on December 3rd 1918 whilst clearing munitions.

    NEQ, Billy was a native of the Granite City, please spare him a particular thought.

    AG
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    What are "the dark days when Britain stood alone" please?
  • I lead worship at our church on Sunday. Normally we might expect some of the Rainbows and Brownies, with assorted parents or grandparents. But, this year just our regular half dozen congregants, which meant I didn't get myself into trouble (excluding the technical problem of having my notes on a tablet that wouldn't work, forcing me to read from my phone instead). With people who don't normally attend church, I might have had a reaction to standing up front with a white poppy (in addition to the red) and lead a service that was a call to peace and reconciliation, to nations not seeking to be richer, greater (again), more powerful than other, a call to build bridges and knock down walls. That we honour those who died on all sides by working to do all we can to stop young people having to go to war, to butcher and be butchered, ever again. Rather than military traditions of bugles and the last post, I included a peace-bell (recorded when I was in Japan). And, certainly avoiding any other elements of jingoist nationalism or glorification of war and the sacrifice others made (so, hymns did not include the abhorrent "I vow to thee, my country")
    A man after my own heart!

  • There is no public war memorial locally; we usually gather outside our "Church Together" charity shop for an ecumenical service. This year we decided that this would be difficult, so we put together a service on FB to be shared around our churches, which went live so as to give the Silence at exactly 11am. https://tinyurl.com/y3hz728y
  • Gee D wrote: »
    What are "the dark days when Britain stood alone" please?

    It's a reference to the not uncommon view that Britain fought in two World Wars, alone against German aggression, forgetting that Britain at the time meant people from across a huge empire, and a number of allies (some rather less obvious eg Portugal), were involved.

    I suppose you could argue that I'm politicising remembrance, I'd argue that I'm presenting a wider view, and hoping it might lodge in a skull or two.
  • Yes. I made sure, on Sunday, to refer to the Soviet Union as the nation which suffered most in the Second World War (although after 1940 of course); and also our general ignorance of the way in which Colonialism and Empire led to African and Asian people – who must have had no idea about the Kaiser and little about Hitler – getting involved in European disputes.
  • I went to the village war memorial (a beautiful listed cross monument carved by Gill from Portland stone and on the site where a medieval village cross once stood) early on Sunday morning and said a private prayer - I would have gone there at 11am with the rest of the village for the two minutes silence if we had not been in lockdown. I also observed two minutes silence and prayer during our Zoom church service at 11am on sunday and privately at 11am today.
  • don't support the troops
    think instead about those killed
    no praise only tears

    (haiku)
  • Gee D wrote: »
    What are "the dark days when Britain stood alone" please?

    It's a reference to the not uncommon view that Britain fought in two World Wars, alone against German aggression, forgetting that Britain at the time meant people from across a huge empire, and a number of allies (some rather less obvious eg Portugal), were involved.

    I suppose you could argue that I'm politicising remembrance, I'd argue that I'm presenting a wider view, and hoping it might lodge in a skull or two.
    Although normal practice is to bow your head and close eyes during the silence, I provided a 2 minute slide show for anyone who preferred to view something to remind them of what and who we're remembering ... standard fare of soldiers in trenches and countless white crosses standing in mute witness to man's blind indifference to his fellow man; but also images of African and Asian troops, refugees, the shell of Coventry cathedral along with Dresden after the fire storm and Hiroshima ...
  • Baptist TrainfanBaptist Trainfan Shipmate
    edited November 2020
    Some years ago I perplexed my congregation by beginning: "My father was born almost exactly 4 years before the First World War broke out. In the early days of the war his was only about 20 miles from the Front, so his family might well have heard the sound of fighting or felt the thud of artillery through the ground. They must also have often seen soldiers and equipment passing through their town. However, the Front moved away from them as the war progressed and their town was never in danger of being overrun." I then explained that my father came from East Prussia (now Poland) and that this was the Eastern front for Germany. (My parents came to Britain at the end of 1938 and my father served in the British Pioneer Corps for a time).
  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    Gee D wrote: »
    What are "the dark days when Britain stood alone" please?


    It's a reference to the not uncommon view that Britain fought in two World Wars, alone against German aggression, forgetting that Britain at the time meant people from across a huge empire, and a number of allies (some rather less obvious eg Portugal), were involved. ....
    Not quite @Sandemaniac. Even in rhetoric that never applied or has been applied to the 1914-18 war. The Western Front was always a joint Anglo-French enterprise, predominantly French, the Russians were fully engaged from 1914 until their revolution and the Italians against the Austrians from 1915 right through.

    It has often been applied to the period in the Second World War between the Fall of France in 1940 and Hitler's invasion of Russia in June 1941. @Gee D might take exception to this because Australia, Canada etc were all in the war during that period, but in thought at the time, they were part of 'the Empire'. France and Poland, though had both been knocked out, leaving some units still fighting if they'd been able to get to Britain or British territory but no front where anyone could effectively engage the Axis. During that period, the Germans did appear to be winning, and could well have succeeded if they hadn't attacked Russia. Sick though I am of people going on and on about 'the War' 'standing alone 'is a fair description of that year.

    Portugal was in the 1914-18 war, partially because the British in Kenya pushed the German army out of the south of Tanganyika, where in stead of surrendering as they were supposed to, they carried on retreating into Portuguese territory. In November 1918, what was left of the German army in East Africa was still fighting but was on British territory in what is now Zambia. Portugal was neutral throughout the 1939-45 war.

  • Good luck explaining that to people like my brother, Enoch! That's the audience I'm aiming at, not people who have actually studied the period in question. I don't suppose it will lodge, but I've tried...
  • Even in the key period of 1940, "standing alone" is factually incorrect. Out of "the few", almost 3000 fighter pilots flying sortie after sortie against the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain almost 600 weren't British; many from the Empire (NZ, Canada and Australia) but also almost 300 Poles, Czech, Belgium and French pilots; also 20 volunteers from neutral US and Ireland. Britain has only managed with the help of friends and allies, "going it alone" is something we've never succeeded at ... and the next few years will show how stupid the idea that we can cope without working with other European nations is.
  • However, by that time Canada had bailed on the Empire. With the adoption in Canada of the Statute of Westminster in 1931, all UK power over Canadian was extinguished (save for the odd exception of amending the Constitution on Canadian request).

    Britain had zero control over Canadian foreign and military policy in 1939. Our declaration of war was September 10th, 1939, upon the King's signature at Windsor to a Canadian declaration of war preceeded by vote of the Parliament of Canada in Ottawa the previous day.

    There was a period of seven days in September 1939 when Britain was at war and Canada was neutral. The German consul in Ottawa spent this time dutifully burning his papers.
  • DoublethinkDoublethink Shipmate
    edited November 2020
    I feel that in choosing to elect authoritarian nationalistic governments who appear to dispise marginalised groups and foreigners we, as a nation, are evidencing the fact we have largely forgotten.

    Perhaps that is unsurprising, given that the world wars are rapidly passing out of living memory - accelerated by Covid. It is not unlike it would be to remember the dead of the Matabele or Zulu wars or the victory over the boxer rebellion, when I was a child.

    It’s become 1940s themed patriotic flag waving with little appreciation, by most, of the cost of war.
  • Good luck explaining that to people like my brother, Enoch! That's the audience I'm aiming at, not people who have actually studied the period in question. I don't suppose it will lodge, but I've tried...

    Said brother manages to find a remembrance meme that takes a pot at BLM. He's a charmer.
  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    Said brother manages to find a remembrance meme that takes a pot at BLM. He's a charmer.
    I probably shouldn't ask, @Sandemaniac, but is he a Brexitist as well?


  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    Gee D wrote: »
    What are "the dark days when Britain stood alone" please?

    It's a reference to the not uncommon view that Britain fought in two World Wars, alone against German aggression, forgetting that Britain at the time meant people from across a huge empire, and a number of allies (some rather less obvious eg Portugal), were involved.

    I suppose you could argue that I'm politicising remembrance, I'd argue that I'm presenting a wider view, and hoping it might lodge in a skull or two.

    That concept of Britain was well and truly out-of-date after 1926, although Churchill and many others did not understand the changes wrought then. Is it still "not uncommon"?
  • 1926? An argument could be made that Britain was more or less out of date when Caesar decided to visit with a legion or two.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    1926 was of course the Conference which led to the Statute of Westminster II. You could argue that the separate representation of Canada, India, Australia, Newfoundland, New Zealand, and South Africa at the Paris Conference, as well as the individual signing of the Treaty of Versailles was even earlier recognition of that. Let's not speculate on what Farage and his like think the position is.
  • Enoch wrote: »
    Said brother manages to find a remembrance meme that takes a pot at BLM. He's a charmer.
    I probably shouldn't ask, @Sandemaniac, but is he a Brexitist as well?

    Thankfully I wasn't near enough in 2016 to find out - he thinks Farage is a cunt, but then he thinks nearly everybody is a cunt so that doesn't tell us very much.

    Gee D - trust me, it's all too common.

  • Gee D wrote: »
    1926 was of course the Conference which led to the Statute of Westminster II. You could argue that the separate representation of Canada, India, Australia, Newfoundland, New Zealand, and South Africa at the Paris Conference, as well as the individual signing of the Treaty of Versailles was even earlier recognition of that. Let's not speculate on what Farage and his like think the position is.

    One can excuse Churchill as New Zealand did not adopt the Statute od Westminster until 1947 and Australia did not do so until 1942.
  • At least in Canada, the Poppy Wars have become a delightful annual rival to the Christmas Wars.

    Last year, of course, we had Don Cherry flaming out with a rant about "you people" who come to Canada to "enjoy our milk and honey", but never buy a poppy. This year, it was Whole Foods, owned by Amazon, outraging patriotic sensibilities by enforcing its employee-uniform code at the expense of plastic poppies.

    Commentators among hoi poloi simultaneously blamed Whole Foods vile sacrilege on "woke" politics, and its status as an "American corporation". American corporationd being normally viewed as promoting decidedly un-woke politics in Canada.

    I'd also be willing to bet that most of these complainants think that "the freedoms our boys died for" would include the freedom for capitalist enterprises to decide for themselves about things like employee uniforms and whatnot.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    SPK - I have little time for Churchill. He could come out with some one-liners from time to time, but there was not much behind him. On the advice of other shipmates, I bought Alanbrooke's War Diaries, and he seems much of the same view. Churchill was furious when Curtin withdrew troops from North Africa to defend Australia. Churchill's opinion was that they were needed in North Africa and the Middle East to preserve his beloved Indian Empire.

    Sandemaniac - I apologise; I thought you were setting out your own opinion.
  • KwesiKwesi Shipmate
    They fly forgotten, as a
    Dream dies at the opening day.
  • At this time each year I feel angry. Anger towards the leaders who couldn't or wouldn't resolve their differences without conning their youth to fight their wars for them knowing they would suffer and die in unimaginable numbers.
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