The White Poppy

Tuesday is Remembrance Day. Inevitably, I have received an invitation from a leftist friend to buy and wear a white poppy instead of the traditional red poppy. The idea is that the red poppy glorifies war; a white poppy protests war, calling instead for peace.

Today I attended the annual prayer service at the cathedral for Remembrance Day. I missed any reference to war being a good thing. The closest they came was a passage from Ecclesiates: “a time for war, and a time for peace.” Which of course is true. The atmosphere was solemn, not celebratory; like a funeral. The theme, as the name of the day implies, was remembering the dead. “At the going down of the sun and in the morning/We will remember them.” The climax of the ceremony was a lone bugler playing the Last Post, as is traditional at a military funeral.

Remembrance Day endorses war in about the same way attending a funeral endorses death. If the deceased died of cancer, does honouring him mean you are endorsing cancer, and wishing more people die of it soon?

It is true that Remembrance Day does not claim their deaths, or their lives, were meaningless. It points out that these young men, some only teenagers, died in a good cause, and honours their courage and self-sacrifice.

Suppose this is wrong? Suppose those who volunteered were just fools, or psychopaths, and those who were conscripted were just cannon fodder. It would still be disrespectful to say this at their funeral. Right or wrong, they gave their lives.

Wearing the white poppy is equivalent to this. In my mind, it is like the Westboro Baptist Church picketing the funerals of soldiers who died in Iraq, or the victims of Sandy Hook. It is offensive to make a funeral political.

I wear the red poppy, and I stand and applaud the surviving veterans who attended the ceremony. I feel contempt for those who wear the white poppy.

Remembrance Day

 

Today is Remembrance Day. 

It was instituted first, of course, to remember those who died in the First World War.

Since then it has become fashionable to consider their sacrifice pointless. The First World War was all a blunder, a folly. The Great Powers sleepwalked into it. It achieved nothing but the exhaustion of Western civilization, and a bigger war twenty years later.

Some will say that of all war; their only issue is that we must never resort to violence. Some will wear white poppies today, implicitly condemning the choice of those we remember to volunteer and risk their lives. Some will wear purple poppies tomorrow, suggesting that, while their deaths are lamentable, they were no better than dumb animals.

This seems to me an appalling lack of respect or empathy for millions of young men whose lives were cut short.

It is true of course that all war is terrible. It is always mass murder. It is true that the world would be better off today had the First World War never happened. 

That is not to say it was of no consequence, or there was nothing worth fighting for.

Germany in 1914 was already imbued with a racialist, nationalist, modernist and anti-Christian philosophy that later became more fully expressed as Nazism. Austria-Hungary was trying to annex a small neighbour. Germany was in violation of treaty and of international law in invading Belgium. There was, as almost always, a right side, and a wrong side. This is why we have wars; otherwise everything could indeed be settled by negotiation.

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 those who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Wear the poppy.

Remembrance Day

 

Armistice Day

 

It’s a hell of a way from yesterday

And all behind is burning;

We frog-march on to invisible dawn

From whence there is no turning.

Each human heart is blown apart

Six ways before September;

The whores of chance damn backward glance

And delicate lads dismember.

There was a war, there is a war, there ever a war will be;

The bloody track leads back from where they nailed God to a tree.

Love a thing, and watch it die,

And only death’s forever.

In wave-swept graves, in parts we lie,

And death, too, is surrender. 

There was a war, there is a war, there ever a war will be;

Who was that raving charlatan we hanged on Calvary?

There’s no escape from sorrow, boys,

Between here and high heaven;

Just pray for once the guns may pause

On the eleventh day, of the eleventh month, as bells toll eleven.

-- Stephen Kent Roney

 

The Guns of August

On the theme of Remembrance Day, Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August is perhaps the finest history book ever written, in terms of prose style.

I recommend it for a sense of the opening moves of the Great War.

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Remembrance Day Gallery

Remembrance Day

Remembrance Day/ Armistice Day has always been special for me. One of my favourite reads growing up was Knights of the Air, about Canadian aces in the First World War. “In Flanders Fields” was the first poem I memorized.

Here are a couple of my war poems, in honour of the day:

Armistice Day

"We are the dead"

It's a hell of a way from yesterday,
And all behind is burning;
We frog-march on to invisible dawn
From whence there is no turning.

There was a war, there is a war, there ever a war will be;
Who was that raving charlatan we hanged on Calvary?

Each human heart is blown apart
Six ways before September;
The whores of chance damn backward glance
And delicate lads dismember.

There was a war, there is a war, there ever a war will be;
The carrion chorus sounds above Megiddo's bloody sea.

Love a thing, and watch it die
And only death's forever;
In wave-swept graves in parts we lie
-- And yet, each year, remember.

There was a war, there is a war, there ever a war will be;
The bloody track leads back from where we nailed Him to a tree.

There's no escape from sorrow, boys,
Between here and high heaven;
Only pray the guns may pause
In the eleventh month, on the eleventh day,
As bells toll eleven.

Korea, Summer, 1951: A Canadian Who Did Not Survive Remembers

August in Asia is hotter than death;
Christ, that a cold rain could fall!
Like the rains that I knew where the jackpines grew
In Canada, when I was small.

Every rock, every brick, is as hot as a wick,
And wickedly ripples the air;
If I could I would go where the sweet Chinooks blow,
For I know of no night fevers there.

I don't that much mind that I die here or there;
When you're dead, you're just dead, as a rule.
But please don't cremate me, deep-freeze me in state--
Damn Sam McGee, let me die cool.

Korea, Summer, 1951

Korea, Summer, 1951: A Canadian Who Did Not Survive Remembers

August in Asia is hotter than death;
Christ, that a cold rain could fall!
Like the rains that I knew where the jackpines grew
In Canada, when I was small.

Every rock, every brick, is as hot as a wick,
And wickedly ripples the air;
If I could I would go where the sweet Chinooks blow,
For I know of no night fevers there.

I don't that much mind that I die here or there;
When you're dead, you're just dead, as a rule.
But please don't cremate me, deep-freeze me in state--
Damn Sam McGee, let me die cool.

-- Stephen K. Roney

Remembrance Day

We are the dead

It's a hell of a way from yesterday
And all behind is burning.
We frog-march on to invisible dawn
From whence there is no turning.

There was a war, there is a war, there ever a war will be;
Who was that raving charlatan we hanged on Calvary?

Each human heart is blown apart
Six ways before September
The whores of chance hex backward glance
And delicate lads dismember.

There was a war, there is a war, there ever a war will be;
The carrion chorus sounds above Megiddo’s bloody sea.

Love a thing, and watch it die
And only death's forever;
In wave-swept graves in parts we lie
And yet each year remember.

There was a war, there is a war, there ever a war will be;
The bloody track leads back from where we nailed him to a tree.

There's no escape from sorrow, boys,
Between here and high heaven;
Only pray the guns may pause
In the eleventh month, on the eleventh day,

As bells toll eleven.

-- Stephen K. Roney