Letter from Britain: Number 1

It is amazing how much we know of others and yet how little. How much information is available, and yet how little insight often to the motivations and history of the why things may be so.

I often find that what fascinates is the small things, and how these small things are extrapolated and perhaps distorted to create an impression and a stereotype. What do we really know of others, of those born and raised thousands of miles from our shores, what has shaped their thoughts and attitudes?

Let me start by stating I speak for myself, I do not suggest my views are the ‘universal British view’, for such does not exist, but what I will endeavour to do in each posting is to describe what has caught my eye, or what has interested me. I will not attempt to ‘report and investigate’, for others do that better than I, but I seek to say what I think, and if others wish to comment such is welcome. 

In final few days of October and the first third of November, any visitor to Britain will be struck by a subtle change in the dress code. The red Poppy will be worn by almost all, by school children to the celebrity TV presenters, from the Monarch to office cleaners, this simple symbol is the ‘British’ understated emblem of remembering fallen soldiers, sailors and Airman of the two World Wars, and the other conflicts; this small gesture of remembrance is ubiquitous in British life in November.

It is more than sixty-five years after the Second World War, and more than ninety years after the guns fell silent on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, 1918 to end the first World War. Nevertheless, the public response to the annual Poppy appeal by the service charity, The Royal British Legion, has not waivered, the country has it seems taken to its heart the last two lines of Laurence Binyon’s poem “For the Fallen”;

At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.

Perhaps it is the simplicity of the idea that has ensured the longevity:

The First War witnessed the first mass slaughter of men by machine, millions perished on the battlefields of France and Belgium, the ground torn and wrought by munitions, and yet in Flanders (a region of Northern France and Belgium) the poppy grew in the devastated fields. The sight inspired a Canadian doctor, John McCrae to pen the poem, “In Flanders’ Fields”, it was to be the inspiration for an American War Secretary, Moina Michael, who began selling poppies to friends to raise money for the ex-Service man, and on the 11 November 1921, the tradition set root. 

In Flanders' Fields
John McCrae, 1915

In Flanders' fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place: and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders' fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe;
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high,
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders' Fields.

Whilst, I had to learn the poem at school, my two boys didn’t, the war poets ‘out of fashion’ in the 1990’s, but they, along with other school children from the length and breadth of the UK, were taught about, and I think understood from a young age what the poppy symbolizes.

For a nation with such a military history, and a nation scared by such magnitudes of war dead, it is noteworthy that very few are at rest in our shoes in the British Isles, but lie, as in the words of the great War poet Rupert Brooke, in,

“… some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England…..”

The country side of France and Belgium and indeed in countries around the globe are home to what Winston Churchill described as the most sacred ground for an Englishman. The graves of the more than 1.7 million commonwealth forces that fell during the two World Wars are maintained in 23,000 cemeteries. At home we have erected more than 100,000 war memorials, from small villages to large cities, in each, pride of place was at time of construction given to the memorial, they are part of the fabric, often walked past without a second glance, but at times the backdrop of collective thanks.

The stereotype is that we Brits live in the past, talking of past glories, such is far from a complex truth. The past, that of  the Normans, Tudor Kings & Queens, Colonisation and the industrial revolution is a past that does not touch the modern lives of any. The sun might not have ever set on Britain’s lost Empire, but that is past and gone, not regret for its passing, or a remorse for its happening…. It was not me and I feel no part of it.

Remembrance and the Poppy are different, it does not feel like distant history, but part of modern life, it is a line of collective thought that unites; it creates a sense of perspective for modern Britain.

I am surprised by my words, I did not begin today with a sense that I should start my first ‘Letter from Britain’, by writing about war and Remembrance, and I am sure my next utterances will be as far away from such. I think the simple explanation is that I noticed a British journalist on BBC 24 hour news reporting from Afghanistan, with  a Poppy  and the juxtaposition of  war, Remembrance and freedom of expression made me just a little more hope that good will always overcome.

November 18, 2010  |  Article Posted By: James Hunter , London
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