This morning I glanced at my rail ticket and, for the first time, spotted the significance of the day and time that I travel – the 11th month, the 11th day and (to round it off) the 11th minute. So, at the official Time of Remembrance, I should be standing on a railway platform in Cheltenham. I hope that, amid the hustle and bustle of a mainline station, I am afforded two minutes of peace.
Few families come through world wars unscathed. My grandfather was seriously injured in WW1 but clung to life until 1923 – just long enough to deny him an inscription on the local war memorial and my grandmother a war widow's pension. Since gran and my father have now died, there is no-one to remember him. Gone and forgotten.
But this story has an interesting twist. A few years ago I searched online at the War Graves site for K----s who had died in active service. It obligingly came up with one Private Dan K---- of the East Yorkshire Regiment, who died on April 23rd 1917 and is buried in Arras, Pas de Calais, France. Dan turned out to be a brother of my grandfather, whom we had forgotten but whom the War Graves Commission have remembered. He will be remembered again on this Remembrance Day, in his part of a foreign field that is forever England... and by his great niece, wearing her poppy on a railway platform in Cheltenham.
'He will be remembered again on this Remembrance Day'. You mean you don't otherwise remember him? I'm sure you do. I once observed Remembrance Day and wore a poppy but no longer. It is a matter of principle for me. My father went to war in France in WW2 and would not speak about it on his return except to say that he was disgusted with 'Man's inhumanity to man'. He had been wounded in the head and was lucky to be alive. They say the wearing of poppies is to remind us and the following generations of the folly of war but that is utter nonsense, we still wage war even now. Do we remember those killed in wars prior to WW1? I think not. Many wars could have been avoided had those who instigated them been dealt with long before others were forced to kill one another. Yes I feel for those who lost their lives but they shouldn't have been there in the first place. They didn't go to war to give their lives for us, their lives were taken from them. No-one goes to war with the intentions of being killed.
ReplyDeleteI will however fly my flag at half mast as a salute and an acknowledgement to the stupidity of it all
Sorry but this subject really gets my goat.
Shirley Anne x
I'm a little unusual in that no fairly close family member died in WW1. In my genealogical investigations I've come across a young man on my Dad's side who was indeed killed, but he would have been a very distant relative indeed, and my parents never knew of his existence. So these ceremonies have no personal significance.
ReplyDeleteBut I do see how Remembrance Sunday provides a formal focus for collective recognition. Surely all deaths are bad, and deserve commemoration.
It must be horrible to experience a battle, and afterwards, if you survive, heartrending to hear the bugle that breaks the silence, and to recall absent friends who didn't make it. No wonder people weep. The dead were of coure victims of politicians' and commanding officers' misjudgements and miscalculations, and not necessarily heroes, nor idealists, just ordinary soldiers, sailors and airmen who did what they were ordered to do. But they deserve deep respect all the same, and Remembrance Sunday, including that two-minute silence, gives that to them.
Lucy