Remembrance Day

October 2, 1918, originally uploaded by Lindsay Beyerstein.

Shaun Mullen invited several guest bloggers, myself included, to post about Veterans Day at Kiko's House.

Comments

[The Phantom]

Here, unfortunately, Veteran's Day has nearly been forgotten. Politicians lay wreaths, sure, but, outside of Vets' families, don't think that many give it much thought.

Interesting to contrast with Remembrance Day as it is commemorated in England and other countries, Canada included. I was in London this past Saturday through Tuesday. Even on Saturday, I saw people wearing poppies. On Monday, I saw many of them.

I think Remembrance Day has more meaning than our day does. I'd like the US to maybe change Veterans' Day into Remembrance Day, always on November 11.

And maybe next year, I'll find a paper poppy to wear on November 11. A lot of our men rest in the Green Fields of France also.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

Phantom, I agree. I think there should be a separate Armed Services Day to honor military personnel--current, former, and fallen.

I grew up in Canada, where Remembrance Day is the most solemn of all public holidays. It really hit home for me as a kid. The interesting thing about making the holiday Remembrance Day, with all the WW1 baggage front and center, is that there's no conflict between honoring the troops and repudiating the war. Nobody thinks WW1 was anything except mass, pointless slaughter. (I mean, even by the war's stated aims it was a failure, given that WW1 helped bring about WW2, rather than ending all wars.) Still, nobody feels anything less than admiration for the sacrifice of the those in uniform.

I feel as if making the holiday into "Veterans Day" makes the whole thing much more complicated and ambiguous. Because it's partly about celebrating WW2 (the original justification for renaming the holiday in the USA), but partly about remembering all the stupid, pointless, brutal wars we've been part of.

I think it's healthy to set aside a full holiday for solemn reflection on war and its consequences. Veterans deserve their day as well, but the two aren't mutually exclusive.

February needs a statutory holiday. Why not add an Armed Services Day to February and restore November 11 to its original place as Remembrance Day?

[cfrost]

I second Phantom’s opinion. We should have kept calling November eleventh armistice day, to remember the day the whole God-damned, pointless 1914-18 nightmare was finally over, and to remember what every war, including those fought for the most just causes, costs. I used to see VFW guys handing out paper poppies, but I don’t anymore. What’s with that? We’re at war again. Shattered bodies, shattered lives. Again. Where are the poppies?

My personal political epiphany was at nine at the ossuary in Verdun. I lived then in Germany in the early ‘60s where at that time the shadow of war was everywhere. On the way to school I’d pass an apartment building neatly sliced so that the wallpaper and plumbing fixtures of vanished rooms covered what was now an exterior wall. Further on were factories still painted in ugly camouflage. I rode to school on a trolley that had the front seat reserved for “Kriegsbeschadigte” (literally, war-damaged ones). My school was a converted Wehrmacht barracks where we hung our coats on hooks screwed into the gun racks that lined the hallway. One of us once puked in class and the rest of us kids whined about the stink. The teacher told us to shut up: she had lived hiding in a basement room with forty other people shitting in a bucket for months. Another teacher had a huge scar where he had been shot through the neck, like George Orwell, and miraculously survived. Another teacher was missing fingers that had not cleared the breach of an artillery piece. Another teacher who spoke heavily accented German was a Serb who had fought with the partisans in Yugoslavia, living in the field for years. The woman that shared our landing in our apartment building had fled west barely ahead of the soviet army, crawling across battlefields and riding atop freight cars. Her mother had taken the precaution of dressing her in as frumpy a manner as possible to avoid rape. I used to catch frogs and newts in the woods near the school where bomb craters had created ponds. And on and on: the war’s lingering spectral presence was part of quotidian life.

War is about the soldiers and about a lot more, all of which must be remembered.

[Tony]

Have a listen to the Remembrance podcast on iTunes or on the Royal British Legion blog. It's a good way to remember.

[1984 Was Not a Shopping List]

>Interesting to contrast with Remembrance Day as it is commemorated in England and other countries, Canada included.

I was in Canada last year for Remembrance Day. I knew enough about the Canadians by that time to know that they'd commemorate it faithfully. However, I was taken aback that people began selling--and wearing--their poppies several days, maybe even a week, before the day. I found that fascinating, and I did the same thing.

cfrost, very interesting stories.

>WWI
>pointless

My grandfathers were on opposite sides in WWI, for Austria-Hungary and England. We still have the medal my English grandfather received for fighting in that war. It's always hard for me, as someone who only believes wars should be fought in self-defense, but knows that they aren't always begun with any such thought in mind, to know how to think of it. But I understand when someone has joined up in order to sacrifice to protect their country. I honor that.

[1984 Was Not a Shopping List]

I also honor my mother, who spent the Second World War as a Far East prisoner of war, nearly starving to death at the hands of the Japanese. She never blamed the Japanese after the war, however--she always said that instead of blaming them, she blamed war itself. Rest in peace.

[cfrost]

Speaking of war and remembrance, there is an interesting site collecting contemporary panoramic scenes of WWII landmarks.
I particularly like the German cemetery in Bastogne, a very November looking scene.

[Cass]

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifle's rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,-
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
and bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girl's brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Wilfred Owen, "Anthem for Doomed Youth" (1917).

[The Phantom]

For those who are interested, there was a discussion on Remembrance Day on El Blogador a SDLP (democratic, non-violent) Irish nationalist site.

El Matador posted a commemoration on Remembrance Day, which was attacked by some from the point of view of "militant" (Irish) Republicanism.

As the Great War took place at the time of the Irish Rising in Dublin and elsewhere, the emotions on this issue are still raw in some quarters. You do not see many poppies in Dublin. Views on this have softened there in recent years, though.

[1984 Was Not a Shopping List]

cfrost, that's a beautiful site (bookmarking)

And Cass, thank you for posting that poem. I remember that, it's beautiful. A pacifist viewpoint from a soldier. As mentioned, and recalling the characterization of WWI as "senseless," it's hard, as a pacifist who only thinks war is justifiable in self-defence, to approach remembrance. Thinking of my own situation, with a grandfather fighting for England and another for Austria-Hungary, one thinks of the confused situation of Austria-Hungary claiming Bosnia-Herzegovina as theirs, while Serbian nationalists fight for the right to administer the place's affairs themselves, and England, taking up arms because a treaty switch has been thrown, almost involuntarily (though there are many viewpoints to challenge this one). It all seems entirely ad hoc, and not done in self-defence at all, though if anyone were the aggressor, it would probably have been Austria-Hungary, which didn't need to attack Serbia, IMO.

In any case, as to the "war guilt vs. remembrance" controversy such as those on the El Blogador thread Phantom posted, I view such things in the same way as when there are police abuses: the abuses are criminal, but the policeman you choose to upbraid about them on the street will probably turn out to be one of the decent ones. I know that there were many Pat Tillmans among those we're remembering, people who felt strongly that they should make a sacrifice for duty, along with the misguided imperialists and all the rest.

[1984 Was Not a Shopping List]

Also must honor my uncle's and father's service during WWII, during which my father nearly died a number of times.

[Cass]

"Dulce et Decorum Est" is more well-known but I think this is my favorite of Owen's works. I love its compassion, and how it moves from images of industrialized slaughter in the opening lines to a quiet, elegaic closing. The line about "the tenderness of patient minds" is one of my favorite in modern poetry.