In Defence of Remembrance Day

I am of an age that means my dad served in the First World War. My grandfather served with distinction in the Boer War, a war which gave rise to the invention of the concentration camp and thus should have little distinction. One of my uncles climbed from a shell hole filled with the dead and survived and a cousin was with the Tank Corps at the Crossing of the Rhine. Another uncle parachuted in on D Day as a War Correspondent for the London Evening News. I clearly remember my Grandpa Outten, RSM, mentioned in dispatches, introducing me to customers in the public house my parents ran, as the next generation of soldier from the family to be there for King and Country. In the attic I found a book of pictures of the battle fields of the battles of the Somme and of Passchendaele and wondering how my dad came through it all. Contrary to grandpas expectations I didn’t follow into the ranks thanks to a growing realisation that it all seemed rather pointless. Especially as we were now in what grown ups called a Cold War, a hot war in Korea, an invasion of Egypt and several unpleasant affairs with people who didn’t seem to like us very much in Kenya and then in Cyprus. Finally, I came across the details of the holocaust and then saw the pictures of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. This can’t be right I thought and have been opposed to war as a marvellous adventure which will solve all, our problems ever since. Recent history not only seems to prove this but also and that we have landed ourselves with even more problems..

However, due to my ancestry and upbringing, I do not see Remembrance Services as glorifying war as many seem to think. I feel they should be seen as a warning from history but also a reminder that so many people, when called upon, have faced the unpleasant music of war, whether in the mud and trenches that awaited my Dad at the ripe old age of 18 or the prison cells or firing squads for the prisoners of conscience or the poor wretches who could not take another day of the shells. For much of my life I have asked myself whether I would have the nerve to face such a nightmare. Being one of a very privileged generation who has not been called on, I will probably never find that answer, but I like to think I would display some kind of courage, whether as an opponent to, or a participant in, some kind of unimaginable warlike experience. Once I was preparing to go off to cross the fence at Porton Down as part of a demonstration against germ and chemical warfare. My Dad tried to dissuade me and I rather unfairly asked him what he was doing at my age. As with all matters from the war, silence was the inevitable response.

And so on November 11th I will remember them: those fellow apprentices with my Dad from Salisbury who all went off with the Somerset Light Infantry and for whom the journey across the channel Folkestone was a one way trip. I will try to imagine what it must have been like for my Dad in one of the many artillery barrages on the Somme. When watching a documentary about the battle of El Alamein he once commented on the sound track, ‘you can’t begin to imagine what a barrage sounds like’. I am pleased to say I can’t, although when one reads that the opening explosions in the battle of the Somme could be heard in the quiet of Hampstead Heath, I get the idea.

Remembrance Day should be seen as a reminder of mankind’s persistent mistakes. It makes me thankful that I have not had to face such terrors, but it also reminds me that a time will come in everyone’s life when we all have to have courage. Whether the fallen of all our wars displayed that at their last we shall never know, but sadly they were there having to face it whether they liked it or not. That surely should be remembered and deserves our respect.