The Pacifist Poppy

Millions of people across Britain take part in the annual two-minute silence to remember those who have lost their lives in battle. Armistice Day marks the anniversary of the end of the First World War. Germany and the Allies agreed a peace deal. War memorials in towns and cities became the focal point for remembrance at the "11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month" - the time the peace agreement between Germany and the Allies took effect in 1918 after four years of fighting.



There is a somewhat false debate about red and white poppies, the white poppy having at its centre the word “peace” and being preferred by Quakers and others with strong pacifist instincts. However it is sometimes forgotten that the Poppy has strong pacifist roots encapsulated by the original slogan “Never again”, originally it was about remembrance and peace. The Royal British Legion has no official opinion on the wearing of white poppies, stating that it "is a matter of choice, the Legion doesn't have a problem whether you wear a red one or a white one, both or none at all."





In the aftermath of World War I there was a great revulsion against war, leading to the formation of War Resisters' International and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and in Britain the No More War Movement and the Peace Pledge Union (PPU). The League of Nations convened several disarmament conferences in the inter-war period.



No-one would have dared to predict the casualties of World War One. When World War One was declared there were street celebrations in most of Europe's capital cities. No-one even envisaged trench warfare in August 1914 let alone the appalling casualties that occurred over 4 years of fighting. In August 1914, Ypres remained a fine example of a medieval city. By 1918, it lay in ruins and the surrounding land had witnessed death by the tens of thousands. The Somme and Verdun witnessed appalling slaughter. No-one could have predicted the horrifying consequences of modern weaponry being used together with out-of-date tactics. The grim figures 'speak' for themselves. The historian A.J.P. Taylor observed it was the first truly industrialised war and it was industrialisation which made possible the scale of the awful bloodbath as “Defence was mechanised but attack was not.”


Poppy Crosses with photos remembering recent deaths in Afghanistan

The total number of military and civilian casualties in World War I was over 35 million. There were over 15 million deaths and 20 million wounded ranking it among the deadliest conflicts in human history. The total number of deaths includes about 10 million military personnel and about 7 million civilians. The Entente Powers (also known as the Allies) lost about 6.0 million soldiers while the Central Powers lost about 4.0 million.



About two-thirds of military deaths in World War I were in battle, unlike the conflicts that took place in the 19th century when the majority of deaths were due to disease. Improvements in medicine as well as the increased lethality of military weaponry were both factors in this development. Nevertheless disease, including the Spanish flu, still caused about one third of total military deaths for all belligerents.

“…My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.”

-Wilfred Owen

Everyone who fought in Belgium and northern France had noticed the extraordinary persistence and profusion of an apparently fragile flower: the cornfield poppy, which splashed its blood-red blooms over the fields every summer. It blooms there to this day, on the fields now returned to the farming they were meant for, and from which the bones of the dead are still collected as the farmers' ploughs uncover them.

The returning American ex-servicemen made the red poppy their emblem. It was particularly associated with a poem written by a Canadian doctor, John McCrae (he died of pneumonia in January 1918). His poem begins:

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....



In Britain, the weary soldiers came back from the grimness of war to find that life was hard at home too, though in a different way. Many of the men were wounded or disabled or suffering the effects of gas and shell-shock. Many were physically or mentally unable to work; many others found that there were no jobs anyway. The provision made for them by the state was less than adequate. They certainly didn't get the heroes' homecoming that they had been led to expect. So ex-servicemen's societies united in 1921 to form the British Legion. Its purpose was to provide support to ex-servicemen, especially the disabled, and their families, and it was to become one of the most successful British charities ever. There was also outrage about the social conditions and poverty in “A Land fit for Heroes” where many old comrades found themselves homeless. Near me in Aylesbury is Duke of York Terrace built by public fundraising and opened by the Duke of York (later King George VI) in 1928, the first social housing in Mid-Bucks.



The revulsion at the wanton waste of human life and the stupidity of war was widespread in the UK and touched all strata of a then very class ridden society. Indeed Officer casualties were very high in WW1 as officers bought their own trench coats and boots and were easily identified by snipers – it is one of the reasons modern combat uniforms are the same for all ranks. Indeed some of the strongest proponents of “The War to end all Wars” doing just that were former military leaders.





Before WW1 Major General Robert Baden Powell, the Hero of Mafeking and founder of the Scout Movement could fairly be portrayed as a flag waving jingoist who organised Scouts on Para-military lines. After the war he shared the horror of his class at the carnage and shed Scout’s Para-military trappings and changed its primary purpose to the promotion of Brotherhood and understanding among young people. This determination that war should never happen again also explains the traction of appeasement and the blind eye many showed to the evils of Nazism in the run up to World War 11.




"Silence in The Square" - Trafalgar Square, London 11th November 2011

So there is a growing concern that a gesture intended to remember the dead and ensure wars would never happen again is being subverted into a Drum-Roll of support for militarism and for current campaigns by the red top Tabloids and charities such as “Help for Heroes.” Veterans last year wrote an open letter to newspapers protesting at the politicisation of Remembrance Ceremonies and the Poppy. Their spokesman said:

"We are concerned that people are trying to take ownership of the poppy for political ends. It is almost as if they are trying to garner support for our boys and any criticism of the wars is a betrayal. That is not what the poppy was all about to start with: it was all about remembrance and peace: never again. The government should be supporting these casualties: they are their liability, not the British Legion's."



In fairness to the British Legion I do feel it keeps the focus on remembrance and the plight of those suffering in the aftermath of wars, the jingoistic mood music comes from elsewhere. Its spokesman said;

"There is nothing in our appeal or campaigning which supports, or does not support, war: we are totally neutral. We are not a warmongering organisation. We don't have a position on war in Iraq or anywhere else. These boys don't send themselves to Iraq – that's a decision for the politicians. We help 160,000 cases a year, servicemen and women and their families. We represent widows at inquests; we fight for compensation for victims who have lost limbs. We are in there, up to our elbows dealing with the cost of conflict."


Field of Remembrance at Westminster Abbey






Mayor of Westminster's official car at the Abbey decorated with poppies



Certainly on Armistice Day when I viewed the Field of Remembrance organised by the British Legion Poppy Factory at Westminster Abbey and the aftermath of the “Silence on the Square” at Trafalgar Square I felt that the original intentions of the Poppy Appeal still held good. The Field of Remembrance at the Abbey was particularly poignant in the presence of veterans, serving soldiers and their families.


British Aerospace - we want lovely wars?

But the price of peace is eternal vigilance and there was a warning of the vested interests of the Military Industrial Complex just beside the Abbey in Westminster Tube Station. Here there was a “message of support” from the worlds' second largest arms manufacturer, BAE Systems, conveniently sited in the underground station bellow Portcullis House where Members of Parliament have their offices and round the corner from the Cenotaph. Making war is a big and highly profitable business; little wonder then that financiers, manufacturers, trade unions and of course the military and now the growing band of support charities are loath to call for peace and disarmament rather that demanding more body armour, tougher boots and more helicopters to rescue the wounded.


Harry Patch 1898 – 2009

I’ll leave the last word to somebody who earned the right to have it, Britain’s last “Tommy”, Harry Patch who died in 2009 aged 111;

“I was taken back to England to convalesce. When the war ended, I don't know if I was more relieved that we'd won or that I didn't have to go back. Passchendaele was a disastrous battle — thousands and thousands of young lives were lost. It makes me angry. Earlier this year, I went back to Ypres to shake the hand of Herr Kuentz, Germany's only surviving veteran from the war. It was emotional. He is 107. We've had 87 years to think what war is. To me, it's a licence to go out and murder. Why should the British government call me up and take me out to a battlefield to shoot a man I never knew, whose language I couldn't speak? All those lives lost for a war finished over a table. Now what is the sense in that?"

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/07/farewell-old-soldiers.html



Edward Kenny

Let’s instead renew the call; Never again!

Remembering my wife’s great uncle, Edward Kenny and my great uncle James McMahon.

Private Edward Kenny, S/5932, Argyle & Sutherland Highlanders, fell 27th August 1916, Thiepval, The Somme, France.

Private James McMahon ,S/43680 , 6th. Bn. Royal Dublin Fusiliers , fell 8th October 1918, Beaurevoir, Aisne, France.

Their stories are told here;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2007/11/towards-somme-personal-journey.html

Never again.


Beaurevoir British Cemetery, Aisne, France

Thiepval Memorial – The Somme, France

Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of The Somme

Thiepval was one of the main theatres of the Battle of the Somme, whose casualties were enormous. In 1932, the Memorial was inaugurated to commemorate the loss of more than 73,367 fighters missing British, Irish and South African soldiers who fell in the battle and who have no known grave. It is now the largest British war memorial in the world and more than 160,000 visitors to the Somme battlefields come here every year, many to pay their respects to relatives whose names are inscribed on the pillars of the great arch.







The Somme Memorial, erected in 1932 by the British government, is dedicated to the 73,367 missing British, Irish and South African soldiers who fell between July 1915 and March 1918, and have no known grave. Their names are engraved on the 16 pillars that form the basis of the building arch, 45 meters high. This is the most important monument in France designed by the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens. This "Memorial to the Missing" is a place of pilgrimage for many.





The Battle of the Somme, and especially its calamitous opening day, has come to be regarded by many as symbolic of the wastefulness and tragedy of British First World combat experience. By evening it gradually became apparent that the day had been a disaster for the British Army. The 1st July 1916 witnessed extraordinary gallantry, immeasurable suffering and an unprecedented number of casualties, estimated at over 50,000 dead and wounded for British Forces alone. The British failure to breach the German lines on 1 July 1916 inevitably led to the strategy of attrition. A vital aspect of this change in the nature of waging war the pursuit of victory by means of the deliberate trading of losses. Beginning in the height of summer, Allied offensive operations on the Somme were brought to an end just over four and half months later by adverse weather conditions: the autumn rains and early winter sleet and snow having turned the battlefield into a barely navigable morass. Attempts merely to exist in such conditions became almost intolerable physical ordeals. The fighting had led to no significant breakthrough for the Allied forces: the territorial results of over four months of relentless assaults on German defence lines had yielded a meagre harvest of gains: a strip, approximately twenty miles wide by six miles deep, was wrested from German possession and this at an enormous cost in casualties.





By the 18th November 1916 British and Commonwealth forces were calculated to have lost 419,654 (dead, wounded and missing); French losses amounted to 204,253. German casualties were estimated to have between 437,000 to 680,000.

The military cemetery reflects the principles of the British memorials: names engraved on a stele or monument, uniform headstones and lack of any distinction between the dead, regardless of military rank, social status, or religion. The Cross of Sacrifice set on an octagonal base has at its centre a bronze broadsword, blade down. Finally, the Stone of Remembrance bears the inscription from the Book of Ecclesiastes: "Their name will live forever" (Their Name Liveth for Evermore).



Private Edward Kenny, S/5932, Argyle & Sutherland Highlanders, who was killed on the Somme on 27th August 1916. He was 24.


Edward Kenny's name on panel 15C of the memorial
Click on picture to see a larger image

Edward Kenny died towards the end of August, a month which was characterised by a campaign of attrition of pointless attacks and counter attacks which achieved no strategic or territorial advantage for either side but left thousand of irrecoverable bodies to be churned into the muddy morass of no man’s land. My wife’s great uncle, Private Edward Kenny, originally from Edenderry, Co. Offaly, Ireland had fallen with the 2nd. Bn. Argyle & Sutherland Highlanders, at the Somme on the 27th August 1916 and he’s commemorated on the “Monument to the Fallen” at Thiepval on the D73 road between Baupaume and Albert. This monument is for soldiers who fell at the Somme who have no known grave or were not identified. His name is inscribed on panel 15C.


Missing of the Somme

For many years all that greeted visitors to Thiepval was the 150-foot marble and brick memorial with the names of the fallen. Now an educational centre has been built with the support of British charities and the Conseil Général of the Département of the Somme. Over 160,000 people visit the site annually and the centre has a permanent exhibition explaining the history of the battle, a gift shop and improved parking and restrooms. Almost 90% of those commemorated on the memorial died between July and November 1916. They include the composer George Butterworth whose music is played as a background in the Visitor Centre. On the 1st July 2011 the 95th Anniversary of the Battle of the Somme was commemorated with the ceremony depicted in the photos.


Thiepval Visitor Centre

The centre is run by The Museum of the First World War (l'Historial de la Grande Guerre ) which is set in a wonderful building incorporating the Château at Péronne and houses the archives, artefacts and numerous exhibitions (including changing exhibitions) on aspects of WW1 and its battles. If visiting Thiepval the museum is only 26 km (35 minutes away by road) and is well worth visiting.



Historial de la Grande Guerre
Château de Péronne
BP 20063
80201 PERONNE cedex
Tél : (+33) 3 22 83 14 18

http://en.historial.org/Practical-information



Thiepval Visitor Centre

http://en.historial.org/content/view/full/21162

They shall grow not old,
As those 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

For my perspective on a trip to the battlefields and the traumatic effect of The Great War on Ireland see;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2007/11/towards-somme-personal-journey.html



Royal Irish Rangers play Killaloe at Thiepval Memorial in France. Filmed on 1st July 2006, the 90th Anniversary of the Battle of the Somme

Armistice Day 2009 - End of a generation

The passing of the First World War generation was marked by a special memorial service at Westminster Abbey today as millions of people across Britain and Europe observed the two-minute Armistice Day silence.

Ninety-one years after the guns fell silent at 11am on 11th November, 1918, the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh joined Gordon Brown, senior politicians and the heads of the armed forces in the solemn ceremony which commemorated the passing of the final three veterans of the war living in Britain, who all died this year. William Stone died in January, aged 108, followed in July by Henry Allingham, 113, and Harry Patch, 111. The only remaining British-born survivor of the war, former seaman Claude Choules, who is 108 now lives in Australia.


Poppies in the fountains at Trafalgar Square

Few can have been unmoved by the poignant sight at the last commemoration at the Cenotaph in Whitehall, London of these last surviving veterans of the First World War joining serving soldiers in current conflicts to mark the 90th anniversary of the day peace returned to Europe. Then Henry Allingham, Harry Patch and Bill Stone led the nation as it remembered the sacrifices made by the 1914-1918 generation. They each represented the armed service they belonged to - for Mr Allingham the Royal Air Force, Mr Patch the Army and Mr Stone the Royal Navy. All three men laid wreaths at the Cenotaph in central London to commemorate Armistice Day. Sadly, but not too surprisingly, all have now died since that ceremony.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/07/farewell-old-soldiers.html


Henry Allingham, Harry Patch and Bill Stone

Being in Westminster and not too far from the Abbey which was the venue for the ceremonies you notice the minutiae of these occasions, the police checking lampposts and sealing manhole covers before hand, the veterans with their medals heading to the ceremony, the Guards colour party in great coats and bearskins marching briskly along the footpath from Wellington Barracks, the ambassador’s cars with their flags going down Toothill Street and the boom of the field in Green Park announcing at 11 the beginning of the silence and two minutes later the boom announcing it ending. Why Gordon Brown’s car passed along Petty France this morning on his way to the Abbey taking a different route from the back of Downing Street to the front of the Abbey. As is the way here these ceremonies are well oiled and practiced with no need for self important motorcades or grandiosity. Wars are and, we sometimes forget, have always been controversial but the orchestrated personal attacks on Gordon Brown by Rupert Murdoch and the tatty Sun “newspaper” represents a new low by the Dirty Digger and his hired help who arrogantly feel they can manipulate the British Public and British Democracy.


Theipval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme

But none of this controversy about current military engagements should in any way to detract from the personal heroism or sacrifice of soldiers in battle and it is right that their bravery is commemorated each year on Armistice Sunday, the service held on the Sunday closest to Armistice Day, the anniversary of the end of the fighting in World War 1 at 11.00 am on the 11th November 1918. Indeed when you read the obituaries of those who served in the wars and the enormous responsibilities and decisions they had to undertake at a tender age you somehow feel that those of us whose lives have not been tempered by war have somehow led shallow lives by contrast. However we largely read about those who survive, not those who perished.

This was brought home to me some years ago when I made a personal journey to the battle fields for there were deaths on both sides of my family in the First World War. My wife’s great uncle Edward Kenny who died with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders in the Battle of the Somme in 1916 and my Great Uncle, James McMahon who died with the Royal Dublin Fusiliers at Beaurevoir in the Ainse 5 weeks before the end of the war in 1918.


Private Edward Kenny

Private Edward Kenny, originally from Edenderry, Co. Offaly had fallen with the 2nd. Bn. Argyle & Sutherland Highlanders, at the Somme on the 27th August 1916 and he’s commemorated alongside 72,088 others at the dramatic “Monument to the Fallen” memorial designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens at Thiepval on the D73 road between Baupaume and Albert. This monument is for soldiers who fell at the Somme who have no known grave or were not identified and his name is inscribed on panel 15C. The entry in "Ireland's Memorial Record" shows he was 24 when he died. To escape from poverty in Ireland they had moved to Bonnybridge near Glasgow and worked in the summer months as “tattie hokers”, the term for agricultural labourer’s who worked on the back breaking potato (tatties in the Scots dialect) harvest for bed and board and low wages. He joined up with the venerable Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders who are based at Scotland’s historic Stirling Castle and is commemorated on the Roll of Honour there and at The Scottish War Memorial at Edinburgh Castle. Disgracefully, to visit the latter you have to pay an expensive admission charge into the tourist theme park which is the modern Edinburgh Castle. We were able to trace his war record from a photo which showed the distinctive hat band of the Argyle and Sutherlands. His brother (my wife’s maternal grandfather) served in the Merchant Navy during the war and survived to live to a ripe old age.


Edward Kenny's War record Card - Transferred to France 13/9/1915 - KIA 27/8/1916


Edward Kenny commemorated in "Ireland's Memorial Record" Click to see a larger image

My great uncle who fell in WW1 was Private James Mc Mahon of the 6th. Bn. Royal Dublin Fusiliers and by coincidence he hailed from Clara, Co. Offaly, the same county as my wife’s great uncle. Unlike my wife’s relative James McMahon has a grave in the Aisne, the Department beyond the Somme whose capital is Cambrai and where the front line had stopped when the hostilities ended with the Armistice at 11 in the morning on the 11th November 1918. James McMahon was killed on the 8th October 1918 at a village called Beaurevoir, one of roundly 90 young Dublin Fusiliers who were killed from the 8th to 11th October and are buried with him in the cemetery. He was killed, aged 20, just over 4 weeks from the end of the war taking part in the so called “March to Victory” which lasted for 100 days until the Armistice. While not obvious today when viewing the sleepy countryside, in 1918 this was the last part of the fortified Hindenburg Line being attacked by tired and inexperienced British Troops resulting in disproportionate casualties amongst the attackers.


James McMahon's grave Beaurevoir, Aisne, France

Like all the Commonwealth cemeteries it is beautifully maintained and lies on the edge of the village with the standard layout of the Cross of Remembrance and a shelter for visitors which also holds the Book of Remembrance. James lies in a row of other Dublin Fusiliers aged from 18 to 21 with his name on the headstone given as “B. J. McMahon”. I wasn’t expecting to feel a great deal of connection with somebody who died so many years before I was born but being there amongst the graves of so many young Irish soldiers who all died on the 8th October 1918 was surprisingly moving.


James McMahon commemorated in "Ireland's Memorial Record"

In our fallen relatives home towns of Edenderry and Clara there are still “British Legion” houses provided for ex-soldiers and their families and in the decades of poverty and economic stagnation many Irish families were quietly grateful for the “War Pensions” they received. Ireland was neutral during the Second World War but many served in the British forces and many also worked in England both to survive and help the war effort including my Grandfather and two uncles who travelled on British Legion travel warrants and worked for the electronics firm Lucas in Birmingham during the war whilst living in a company dormitory. My father at the age of ten and his family on the other hand came in the other direction as refugees from the devastating blitz in Coventry.



On Armistice Day I too am proud to wear a poppy not in support of British Militarism or to legitimise the wanton waste of life in war. Rather I wear it to remember the great sacrifice of Edward Kenny and James McMahon and all their comrades who made a brave personal choice to fight for the greater freedom of humanity and paid the ultimate price for their beliefs.


Gurkha Tul Bahadur Pun VC

I leave the last word to the “Last Tommy” Harry Patch who thought that his comrade’s sacrifice had been in vain because what the world achieved was not “Peace in our Time” but rather it set the scene for the conflict of WW11. He expressed himself movingly and plainly in interviews in 2004;


Harry Patch 1898 - 2009

“I was taken back to England to convalesce. When the war ended, I don't know if I was more relieved that we'd won or that I didn't have to go back. Passchendaele was a disastrous battle — thousands and thousands of young lives were lost. It makes me angry. Earlier this year, I went back to Ypres to shake the hand of Herr Kuentz, Germany's only surviving veteran from the war. It was emotional. He is 107. We've had 87 years to think what war is. To me, it's a licence to go out and murder. Why should the British government call me up and take me out to a battlefield to shoot a man I never knew, whose language I couldn't speak? All those lives lost for a war finished over a table. Now what is the sense in that?"

......."It wasn’t worth it. No war is worth it. No war is worth the loss of a couple of lives let alone thousands. T’isn’t worth it … the First World War, if you boil it down, what was it? Nothing but a family row. That’s what caused it. The Second World War – Hitler wanted to govern Europe, nothing to it. I would have taken the Kaiser, his son, Hitler and the people on his side … and bloody shot them. Out the way and saved millions of lives. T’isn’t worth it."

See also;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2007/11/towards-somme-personal-journey.html