I was pleased to be outside of the UK yesterday. I do think it is important to have a day when nations can come together to reflect on the consequences of war, mourn its victims and commit themselves to resolving conflicts peacefully. However, the iconography, pomp and ceremony that surrounds Armistice Day, particularly this one, is more complicated than that. The implied militarism in the way we do it is inescapable and its symbolism divisive.
Even in Portugal it was impossible to escape the British Legion version of history. Taped to the sanitary block doors of Yelloh Touristcampo in Luz were two flyers.
I guess given the Algarve's British ex-pat community, then Armistice Day is probably marked in some way most years. The campsite was also hosting a UK Camping and Caravan Club rally; the institution seems like an adult version of 'The Scouts' so it would have been surprising if what they had come up was inclusive no matter their good intentions, after all clubs by their nature are about exclusion.
So what the jolly Brit caravaners had arranged was a memorial event on the campsite stage at 11am. on the 11th. In order to re-inforce the 'all nationalities are welcome' they had translated their poster into French. There were a good number of French people here, however, they were outnumbered considerable by Germans. If I had been a German visitor I would have concluded that since the posters were in English and French I was not really welcome.
This lies at the heart of my discomfort with the way we observe Remembrance Day, it's a mixed message - does it concern 'the fallen' generally, or only ours and those of our allies? Are we, saying as Auden wrote in the final line of 'Spain' that 'History to the defeated can only say alas?'
This ambivalence was further reflected in the phrase on the poster that the event intended to commemorate all those who 'gave their life for our freedom'. No soldier in the WWI gave their life for freedom, they perished in a futile conflict which concerned the pursuit of national advantage by European powers. Germany, France and Great Britain were fundamentally similar - fledgling democracies (not one had universal suffrage), but all technologically advanced industrial nations with empires to defend and imperialist ambitions. Millions perished defending a misplaced sense of national honour not freedom.
Perhaps the idea is more appropriate to WW2, it is difficult to imagine how Hitler could have been stopped other than militarily. Even so, not all his adversaries were fighting for freedom and democracy either. Stalin certainly was not.
Even a hundred years on the events display national mores as much as international solidarity and accord - Macron with his tricolour, May wearing a poppy.
Perhaps this is the best we can do, stand together respectfully remembering our own. The step of giving equal respect to another nation's fallen is simply beyond us. We are too tribal a species.
So far as our symbol of remembrance is concerned it seems from the news on-line Britain is drowning in poppies, a symbol associated with militarism not peace. Maybe that is appropriate given our imperial past. The flower is undoubtedly a powerful symbol, red for blood spilled, seemingly fragile like human life, yet strong and resilient like the human spirit. However the flower's association with the killing fields of Northern France is derived from John McCrae's poem 'In Flanders Fields' written in May 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 field.
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.
McCrae was a Canadian officer and the poem was written in remembrance of a fellow officer who had been killed in the second battle of Ypres. It is a soldier's poem written for a fellow soldier, though McCrae was not a combatant himself, but a member of the medical corp. The poem itself is written as a rondeau, beautifully done, if somewhat conventional, preferring bland abstraction and symbolism to the gritty realism of the work of Wilfred Owen, for example. So being a soldier's poem written as a commemorative piece by an officer in the heat of battle it should not surprise us that the message of the final stanza exhorts the audience - the Dead's 'comrades in arms' to 'Take up our quarrel with the foe'. It is a poem that exhorts us to vengeance not peace; as such it is uniquely inappropriate to Armistice Day.
However, it is unsurprising that its central image was purloined in the immediate aftermath of the Great War as a fund raising brand, first in America, then later by General Haig in Britain in 1921. The British Legion is a military charity, set up by the military for the military. The militarism of McCrae's poem in this context is not particularly controversial. It only becomes problematic when adopted more generally as a symbol of remembrance, then its association the British military establishment does provoke debate, leading to peace campaigners in the 20s and 30s to propose a white poppy as a 'de-militarised' alternative. The red poppy remains divisive today, particularly in Northern Ireland where it is shunned by the Nationalist community due to its association with the British army.
Other flowers have been used as commemorative symbols for Armistice Day, particularly the forget-me-not, popular at one time in the eastern states of Canada. Personally I would prefer it, not least because it links to what seems to me a far more appropriate and thoughtful poem of remembrance, Keith Douglas's 'Vergissmeinnicht'. It was written during WW2, the poet was killed three days into the Battle of Normandy, vergissmeinnicht means forget-me-not in German.
Three weeks gone and the combatants gone
returning over the nightmare ground
we found the place again, and found
the soldier sprawling in the sun.
The frowning barrel of his gun
overshadowing. As we came on
that day, he hit my tank with one
like the entry of a demon.
Look. Here in the gunpit spoil
the dishonoured picture of his girl
who has put: Steffi. Vergissmeinnicht.
in a copybook gothic script.
We see him almost with content,
abased, and seeming to have paid
and mocked at by his own equipment
that's hard and good when he's decayed.
But she would weep to see today
how on his skin the swart flies move;
the dust upon the paper eye
and the burst stomach like a cave.
For here the lover and killer are mingled
who had one body and one heart.
And death who had the soldier singled
has done the lover mortal hurt.
Why I find this poem so powerful is to do with its tone and the way it confounds simple explanation. It is not full of stirring abstractions like 'In Flanders Fields'. Neither does it strive to depict the horrors of war in graphic detail like Wilfred Owen's work. It has a kind of cool detached quietude, but the horror is implicit in the way the paraphernalia of war remains, Steffi is left behind, but the soldier's corpse decays. Vergissmeinnicht takes on a cruel irony.
Parts of the poem are ambiguous and defy a simple reading:
We see him almost with content,
abased, and seeming to have paid
and mocked at by his own equipment
that's hard and good when he's decayed.
Why does the protagonist regard the corpse with 'content'? In what sense has the soldier 'paid'? The poem is thought provoking and unsettling. Poems for Remembrance Day should be.
So, from almost two thousand miles away I am not wearing a poppy and have replaced a minute's silence with hours of reflection. Just because I reject the iconography and ritual of Armistice Day does not mean I don't care, but I distrust sentimentality and ritual display. What I decided to do instead as an act of remembrance was to re-write the final stanza of 'In Flanders Fields' from a less militaristic standpoint. My initial inclination was to include an apology to John McCrae for vandalising his poem. However I decided against it after I learned that he had scrapped the poem, dissatisfied with his effort; it only survived because colleagues rescued it from the bin. I wonder if the poet himself had second thoughts about the concluding stanza. Anyway, for clarity's sake my words are in italics.
In Flanders fields the poppies grow
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 field.
We have no quarrel with the foe,
Comrades in death mouldering below
These shell-pocked plains. We cannot know
The peace you know, take courage and defy
the call to arms; let sky larks fly
the call to arms; let sky larks fly
And meaningless the poppies blow
In Flanders fields.
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