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?
How will you observe it?
Comments
How will you observe it?
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.
BroJames, Purgatory Host
BroJames, Purgatory Host
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.
Is this related to why fusion is so much harder than fission?
DT
SoF admin
I love that tradition with the poppy.
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 agree with you about "I vow to thee, my country", but it's very rarely heard here. The Last Post and Reveille of course.
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.
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
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.
think instead about those killed
no praise only tears
(haiku)
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.
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.
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.
Said brother manages to find a remembrance meme that takes a pot at BLM. He's a charmer.
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"?
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.
One can excuse Churchill as New Zealand did not adopt the Statute od Westminster until 1947 and Australia did not do so until 1942.
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.
Sandemaniac - I apologise; I thought you were setting out your own opinion.
Dream dies at the opening day.