Lest we forget...

I had an interesting and thought-provoking morning.

I wear a red poppy at this time of year as do many of us.

Today I was accosted by a patient. As he sat down he looked at me and said, "You'll never catch me wearing one of those." I murmured something non-committal and he carried on. "It glorifies war." I changed the subject back to his eyesight. Still he persisted. "No-one fought for me," he said. "I was born after the Second World War and all the wars since then have just been us interfering where we don't belong. They have nothing to do with me, or you."

At that point I suggested that as we only had a limited amount of time to carry out his eye examination and that the health of his eyes had much to do with both of us we really needed to get on. He seemed to accept this and the rest of the examination proceeded uneventfully.

I heard him later accost another member of staff about his poppy. This member of staff was a little more forthright in his response and the man left.

It did get me thinking though about why I wear my poppy. Does the red poppy really glorify war? I was under the impression that the red poppy is worn on Armistice Day to mark the end of a war, a cessation of fighting and to remember those soldiers who lost their lives.

I remember once talking to an ex- serviceman who came to visit our school. He thought that poppy day would pass into history once his generation had gone. He was wrong. The poppy has been appropriated by those who fought and fight in conflicts which have succeeded the two World Wars. It continues to have symbolic power perhaps because it is a moral marker, a sign that conflict may end, but not without terrible consequences for all those involved, on all sides. Given that wars are now fought mostly in distant lands and have little impact on the day to day lives of most of us here I reckon it's no bad thing to be reminded of this occasionally.

Today's soldiers are under incredible pressure, from lack of funding and equipment to what must seem to them like an absence of public support. The issues surrounding current wars and peace-keeping efforts are more political and complicated than ever before. They are also, in many cases, deeply controversial. But it seems to me that fundamentally, the majority of these brave men and women believe in the same principles as those soldiers who went before them, only now they get to take the flak from those of us who disagree with the politics of any conflict situation in which they find themselves.

I see white poppies and I respect the sentiments of those who wear them. There is too much conflict in the world, too often as a result of our political leaders' catastrophic ignorance, political posturing and lack of anything approaching respect for or understanding of other cultures. I will continue to wear my red poppy though as a sign of respect for those soldiers from my Great Grandfather's generation onwards who laid and continue to lay their lives on the line in the fulfilment of their duties.

Oh...and I studied this poem for English O-Level, under duress, many years ago. I studied it mechanically, learning by rote all the meanings and sentiments. I regurgitated them in my exam texts and achieved an A. Years later, when I rediscovered the poetry of WW1 for myself I wondered how on earth I managed to pass with such a high mark when I'd had absolutely no clue as to the real meaning and horror of Owen's words.

I don't usually write this much and hadn't intended to today but if you've reached here thank you for listening to my ramblings. I'll leave you with the poem.

Dulce et Decorum est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent14 for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.