Poppy Day
 

Does anyone else have a poppy day? Isn't it time we stopped this? Every year I feel less and less inclined to wear one. What do the rest of you think?

I've always felt some ambivalence towards wearing a poppy, since most of my history lessons in school were exulting over shooting the lobsterbacks....

And yes, the World Wars were a long time ago now, but Britain hasn't stopped sending people off to die, so it seems fair enough to acknowledge them once a year. Remembrance Sunday is a fine and moving occasion. The weeks of enforced public mourning leading up to it are perhaps excessive. The closest American equivalent to the media hounding of public officials for not wearing a poppy is the hoohah over the wearing of an American flag lapel pin.

Coming back to edit out an inside joke.

I associate poppies with June, not October. The English climate is so contrary.

Nothing to do with the climate, Andrew. They celebrate Armistice Day.

It means a lot to those families who still grieve.

But if it's Armistice Day 1918 there can't be many still grieving, Ross. Or indeed any.

When I was a child the old guys still sold or gave away the paper poppies. I haven't heard of it in years. Do folks still wear red or white roses (for living or dead, respectively) on Mother's Day?

Interestingly, Americans still wear the poppies but do so on Memorial Day.

https://www.vfw.org/Community/Buddy-Poppy/

In a word, John - NO.

We must continue to remember all of those who fought, and died, in both World Wars. But the Poppy Appeal isn't just for veterans of the past.

"Your Royal British Legion poppy helps us provide thousands of modern veterans, Service men, women and their families with vital advice and support. So join this year's Poppy Appeal and wear your poppy with pride.''
See Remembrance on their website.

Are you being deliberately contentious in starting this thread, John... or what?

You asked, ''What do the rest of you think?'' Sorry, but I'm inclined to think Shame on you.

Here in Canada we wear a poppy throughout the month of November. It is a longstanding tradition.

The Royal Canadian mint now has available a special coin pack commemorating the 100th anniversary of Canadian Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae's poem, In Flanders Fields.

The website states: It is one of the First World War's most recognized poems and an integral part of Canadian culture. The poem' s striking imagery has served to enshrine the poem and the poppy as enduring and powerful symbols of remembrance for all Canadians, to this day.

Oh come, Jayne. Lighten up. I actually bought a poppy today from my nearly-blind neighbour down the street. But lots of people think as I do. I'll bet neither of my daughters buys a poppy. Poppy day commemorates Armistice Day November 11th 1918. Poppies in Flanders Field, don't you know. If we want to help soldiers wounded and killed in Tony Blair's wars then let's have another day altogether. But, as I said, I bought a poppy today.

I don't actually approve of little flags to show I have given money to a charity. A sort of boasting, don't you find? My poppy is about half an inch across and I shall wear it under my coat. I give money to my local hospice (after all I may need it soon). I hand over a fiverand the chap says thank you very much. No flag.

Never mind bringing Blair into this - We don't need a separate day to remember all the soldiers who have been wounded and killed. We already have one.

If you don't wish to ''wear your poppy with pride'' that's fine. I see it as showing my support, not as boasting that I've given money to charity.

Bu Jayne, Blair has to come into it. Most of the wars we waged since 1945 have been quite unneccesary (and that goes for the US too) and our soldiers have died for nothingIn Iraq. In Afghanistan. And if we put a toe into Syria, that would be in Syria too. Only the war for the Falklands had any justification and Mrs Thatcher didn't want to fght that at all. On the other hand...

John, you've already told me to lighten up ...over the subject of remembrance, which is what was under discussion. Now you have moved the goal posts and completely changed the subject!!!

I'm sorry but I've run out of patience with you and I am NOT getting into the business of Blair, Irag or anything to do with your post above.

Jayne

Such losses.
What family in Britain did not suffer loss in the great wars?
And how could we forget?

But, David, sometime we must forget unlesss we are Scots for whom the Battle of Bannockburn happened yesterday.

The effects of war can reveberate through a family for many generations.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.

Lest we forget.

This is said every night in the 1000's of Returned Serviceman clubs thoughout Australia.

Indeed. Thank you, Ross. Lawrence Binyon's For the Fallen sums up the whole point of ''Remembrance''.

Jayne

I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.

We have poppies too. Best wishes to the veterans.

https://scontent.ftpa1-1.fna.fbcdn.n...85&oe=56B55237

I think John may have a point. As explained here.

Duncan

Oh, Duncan, puh-lease!

The Guardian is a left-wing rag which has its own agenda. This is not an ''explanation'' which defends John's views, as far as I'm concerned.
There was much discussion on the radio today. "The most fortunate in our society have turned the solemnity of remembrance for fallen soldiers in ancient wars into a justification for our most recent armed conflicts." What a load of b****cks!

The idea that you can honor an eighteen year old brutally murdered in a trench a hundred years ago without allowing yourself to question the State and the dillusions used to get that eighteen year old into the trenches of yesterday and today is an interesting juxtaposition, a thimble of memory and a sea of Lethe.

I am trying to recall a rather good poem I heard once which seems relevant in the light of the very recent meetings with the Saudi government. It took the form of a memo to the UK delegates. I wish I could recall who wrote it. It concluded, roughly, thus:

Show them friendship and kinship and warships,
Show them guns, guided missiles and jets.
And be sure to remind everybody concerned
To wear poppies, Lest Someone Forgets.

Bollocks is as variable in appearance as the thing(s) for which it is named.

Perhaps the honest answer is to wear a white poppy.

A friend explained to me last week that poppies are the flower of choice for this remembrance because right after the war ended, poppies proliferated across the fields where the battles had happened. Is this common knowledge? It was news to me.

I think all British children of my generation know that retrospective explanation, Andrew. I believe otherwise, basing my opinion on some of the "trench" literature of the time. This, for instance, by Isaac Rosenberg:

‘Break of Day in the Trenches’

The darkness crumbles away
It is the same old druid Time as ever,
Only a live thing leaps my hand,
A queer sardonic rat,
As I pull the parapet’s poppy
To stick behind my ear.
Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew
Your cosmopolitan sympathies,
Now you have touched this English hand
You will do the same to a German
Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure
To cross the sleeping green between.
It seems you inwardly grin as you pass
Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes,
Less chanced than you for life,
Bonds to the whims of murder,
Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,
The torn fields of France.
What do you see in our eyes
At the shrieking iron and flame
Hurled through still heavens?
What quaver -what heart aghast?
Poppies whose roots are in men’s veins
Drop, and are ever dropping;
But mine in my ear is safe,
Just a little white with the dust.

The poppy is a weed of cornfields that were commandeered, destroyed, lay fallow and were gradually brought back to their original purpose by those who survived. It is known in botanical circles for its persistence.

Some people believe that the above poem (not my botanical tangent) was responsible for the choice of the poppy as a symbol, making it specific to that particular conflict which was, at the time, referred to as "the war to end all wars".

The poppy I wear, notionally, is the one the son of a Latvian Jew carried behind his ear for a while before he died on the Somme at the age of 27. It is not red with blood; it is white with the dust of his last line.

The honest answer may be to buy a poppy but then not wear it as I just did. Though I confess that was old man's forgetfulness. And of course I do have a point. Of course I do.

What about yellow poppies for those of us who would have deserted, just as all the American Rhodes sholars I met in Oxford had done.

Absolutely, Ann - to adapt the Bard - 'a white poppy gratis; nothing else for God's sake'. The Guardian article is spot on and unites me with John (saving your tired old barb about Bannockburn). If you seriously think that Guardian is left-wing, Jayne - let alone a 'rag' - I suspect you should get out more. Above all (save the Rosenberg, of course) I shall certainly remember Andrew's gently killing phrase - "a thimble of memory in a sea of Lethe".

I'm puzzled, Nigel, by the intended result of a statement like, "The Guardian is not a left-wing rag." Is it to move the perceived center, for the benefit of both the timid partisan and the low-information voter? Is it to convey a subtle, and perhaps self-flattering threat, that there is a real leftism out there, lurking behind the compromises of the system, that will bring the Revolution when the time is right? It is like the assertion that "Obama is not a liberal." There is clearly some intended payoff for the statement, but I'm not sure what it is.

With respect to poppies, yes, when symbols appear to be corrupted, they present a quandary for people whose intention with respect to the symbol is unchanged. They can go on saying the same thing with it at the risk of being misunderstood or they can stop expressing their intention or use a different symbol for it, alternatives which can also be misunderstood. Plenty of room for hypocrisy and manipulation around corrupted symbols.

Thank you, Ann. That poem and other are included in the small anthology "First World War Poems" selected by Andrew Motion and published by Faber. I strongly recommend it. Some poems never go out of fashion.

Also there are many lines for reflection in the anthology "Poetry of the Forties" edited by Robin Skelton (Penguin Modern Classics". Such as these lines with a most contemporary feel. The lines are by Alun Lewis in "All Day It Has Rained".

(...)
And we talked of girls, and dropping bombs on Rome
And thought of the quiet dead and the loud celebrities
Exhorting us to slaughter, and the herded refugees.
(...)

Today Sweden began border checks, albeit supposedly temporary and random. On Monday of this week, the flow of asylum seekers into Sweden reached a new record: 2160 in ONE DAY. Of which 741 were children traveling alone, sent by their parents in the hope that they might find a haven.

Even though you may not understand the language, it is enough to look at the video at the top of this link to get a grip on what is happening
http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/pa...cle21729680.ab

while elsewhere this is what the long lines of the displaced encounter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungar...er_barrier.jpg

One of our Greek-Swedish authors, Theodor Kallifitides tweeted this:

Meanwhile, "patriots" influenced by extremist propaganda are burning down the shelters intended for the refugees.

Come on, Nigel. The Guardian is not left wing? Is The Daily Mail right wing? These are descriptive terms, not abuse. The Guardian is not as left wing as Marxism Today. The Daily Mail is not as right wing as whatever the organ of the BNP is called. Would you accept 'left-leaning'. Oh and I'll stop trotting out old canards about the skirmish at Bannockburn when the Scots stop rabbiting on about it.

A Renascence

by Robert Graves

White flabbiness goes brown and lean,
Dumpling arms are now brass bars,
They’ve learnt to suffer and live clean,
And to think below the stars.

They’ve steeled a tender, girlish heart,
Tempered it with a man’s pride,
Learning to play the butcher’s part
Though the woman screams inside—

Learning to leap the parapet,
Face the open rush, and then
To stab with the stark bayonet,
Side by side with fighting men.

On Achi Baba’s rock their bones
Whiten, and on Flanders’ plain,
But of their travailings and groans
Poetry is born again.


A Mystic as Soldier

by Siegfried Sassoon

I lived my days apart,
Dreaming fair songs for God;
By the glory in my heart
Covered and crowned and shod.

Now God is in the strife,
And I must seek Him there,
Where death outnumbers life,
And fury smites the air.

I walk the secret way
With anger in my brain.
O music through my clay,
When will you sound again?


.

You are the only person known to me who goes on about Bannockburn, John - so if you stop....

As to The Guardian's political credentials, I neither think 'left-wing' pejorative, nor accurate.
It once was a consistent shade of warm pink but now is merely pale beige with some fluorescent pink, deep blue and occasional green spots; its purple passages are largely confined to some of its coverage of the visual arts - but it does give some good black ink to Timothy Garton Ash, who remains not only the best but almost the sole reason - book reviews aside - for buying it; well, that and the awfulness of all the English alternatives.

As to remembrance, I always find two things running through my head.

One is a piece of film showing in Britain's cinemas in the autumn of 1938 from Edmund Goulding's outstanding remake of "The Dawn Patrol". Donald Crisp, in his magnificent performance as the Adjutant at the end of the film, as he receives the heroically dead squadron commander's (Errol Flynn) flying helmet and goggles says; "This says that a very brave gentleman died today - and what have all these deaths accomplished, in this war and in the wars that are to come?"

The other is the inscription on the monument at Montemaggiore al Metauro at the spot where Churchill, Alexander and Leese watched the final battle for the Gothic line in August 1944. It records that this battle awakened the memories of that other 'decisive' battle of the Metauro against Hasdrubal over two thousand years previously and regrets that so little has been learned in that time.