In a way similar to that in which All Souls Day quietly comes into focus, and, after lingering for several days, drifts from my everyday awareness, Remembrance Day takes its place in the annual rhythm of my life. My awareness of it is shared with the country as a whole and with every individual in it, just as my acknowledgement of it is shared with the majority of the population; awareness of the day, after all, has become unavoidable, and conforming to the recognizable acknowledgement of it now appears to be almost compulsory. But what speaks of both my underlying valuing of it and of its effect on me, is my experience of the day. That experience is not a comfortable one.
This contrasts starkly with my relationship with All Souls Day, which is always comfortable and peaceful, and which, in spite of merely tip-toeing into my consciousness every year, is every bit as unavoidable for me. Since its introduction into my life, its low profile has anchored itself within me in a way that the visible face of Remembrance Day has not, does not, and probably will not.
All Souls has become a meaningful and undeniable link with something barely understood but tied in with my faith as much as with thoughts of life and death. Most people do not share my awareness of this day; it has not been made unavoidable. From most viewpoints it is all but invisible, and most people’s awareness around that time is likely to be based on Halloween; but nothing hides the occurrence and the presence of Remembrance Day when it comes round. Indeed it has become as the secular aspects of both Christmas and Easter: obvious to all long before the day itself.
This contrasts starkly with my relationship with All Souls Day, which is always comfortable and peaceful, and which, in spite of merely tip-toeing into my consciousness every year, is every bit as unavoidable for me. Since its introduction into my life, its low profile has anchored itself within me in a way that the visible face of Remembrance Day has not, does not, and probably will not.
All Souls has become a meaningful and undeniable link with something barely understood but tied in with my faith as much as with thoughts of life and death. Most people do not share my awareness of this day; it has not been made unavoidable. From most viewpoints it is all but invisible, and most people’s awareness around that time is likely to be based on Halloween; but nothing hides the occurrence and the presence of Remembrance Day when it comes round. Indeed it has become as the secular aspects of both Christmas and Easter: obvious to all long before the day itself.
.
The experience, as well as the day itself, has now slipped away and I am able to write this in a way that would not have been possible a few days ago. As soon as I had thought to write something here on the subject, I found myself struggling to put my thoughts into words. The answer was found in The Guardian editorial of November 7th, and the following link will take you to the relevant writing should you wish to read it. Far better that than for both of us to waste time on words that would not do the job nearly so well.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/07/remembrance-day-poppies-cenotaph
Quoting from the above, ‘One recent poll found that four-fifths of the population think the two-minute silence is “relevant to them”.
It is certainly relevant to me, but not through any experience of loss or grief associated with wars and conflict between peoples.
The experience, as well as the day itself, has now slipped away and I am able to write this in a way that would not have been possible a few days ago. As soon as I had thought to write something here on the subject, I found myself struggling to put my thoughts into words. The answer was found in The Guardian editorial of November 7th, and the following link will take you to the relevant writing should you wish to read it. Far better that than for both of us to waste time on words that would not do the job nearly so well.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/07/remembrance-day-poppies-cenotaph
Quoting from the above, ‘One recent poll found that four-fifths of the population think the two-minute silence is “relevant to them”.
It is certainly relevant to me, but not through any experience of loss or grief associated with wars and conflict between peoples.
For everyone in Britain, Afghanistan is today’s constant reminder of the cost of involvement in war, but other than those who are directly involved in the conflict – military personnel and their families, and, to a lesser degree, their friends and neighbours – none of us really know that cost or truly find remembrance relevant as a result of what is happening in Afghanistan. The relevance comes from what is embedded in our own lives: remembrance is made real by conflicts which are already part of our own reality.
For those of us whose whole lives have been lived in peace, the sacrifices made and the risks taken in the cause of retaining and protecting that relatively secure and peaceful world are known to us only through reflections of history and through the memories of older family members. It is the Second World War that makes Remembrance Day relevant for me. For those who lived through it, civilians included, it is part of their own life story, and they may see all that has occurred since 1945 in the light of their own uncertainties during those preceding years. But having been born just after the war, I have no direct experience of it, no personal memory, no loss, no grief. Awareness of its importance in my own life is through consciousness of the important place it occupied in the lives of two people who did live through it: the soldier and the nurse who became my parents.
A few years ago, during this month of remembrance, a quiet but powerful chapter in my life, representative of the same half-century story of the local community as a whole, and indeed of the entire country, came to an end with the death of the last of my father’s siblings.
In March 1944 photographs of four soldiers, my father and his three brothers, appeared in a local newspaper article reporting on their whereabouts. They had all volunteered in 1940 and had gone their separate ways for the duration of the war. All four survived, though it was not until April 1946 that the last of them finally returned. I have often wondered how that must have felt to my grandparents: saying farewell to all four of them and not knowing if they would ever see them again; and then, having all four of them return safely home. Not only the brothers, but their parents too will have known and felt what remembrance was all about.
Every November, the poppies, the parades, the silences, the coverage of the Cenotaph and the Albert Hall: all these, built upon year by year through my parents’ thoughts, words, and quiet tears, have somehow made the war a defining part of my own life despite its having ended before I was born.
Yes, we will remember them. Not only those who died: those who never came home, but also those who did return; the men and women who lived on, and made the world that is ours today. Men like my father and his brothers: men who risked all for our sakes, and then rebuilt the security of home in their quiet lives.
One day, after the death of the last of the brothers, and as his executor, I came across his medals. He had done exactly the same as my Father. They had opened those small brown cardboard boxes, looked at the medals, and replaced them, the ribbons still unattached and folded. And there they stayed for the next fifty years. There they remain today; valued and evocative; safe in their boxes.
I also came across a small unimportant looking notebook among assorted bits and pieces; something which could so easily have been simply thrown away. It was several days before I picked it up again and opened it. It was ‘The Boys’ Diary’, as my Grandmother had called it at the top of the first page. Her handwritten record of every known move they made during the war, and every communication received from them, from the day the first one left home, to the day the last one returned, - a period of more than six years.
It is a wonderful fragment of truth from a troubled time; a time that finally came to an end for me when a surviving soldier’s ashes were placed in his parents’ grave and his generation was finally at rest. As with their return from war: all safely home, and together once more.
I remember, as a boy, watching my father close up his shop to take his place in the Remembrance Day parade, and marching through the town with the other men. I always wondered why he had no medals; everyone else seemed to. That was before my sense of awe and wonder when I first came across them. From those far off years right up to the end of his life, his face always looked different on Remembrance Day. Experiences undisclosed, faces only he could see, and names that I would never hear; all these he has somehow passed down to me. Together with that silent box and its contents, they join my awareness and appreciation of all that my parents gave to me and to my own siblings: foundations for the forming of my own very personal and very real experience of Remembrance Day and all that it should signify.
Yes. We will remember them.
For those of us whose whole lives have been lived in peace, the sacrifices made and the risks taken in the cause of retaining and protecting that relatively secure and peaceful world are known to us only through reflections of history and through the memories of older family members. It is the Second World War that makes Remembrance Day relevant for me. For those who lived through it, civilians included, it is part of their own life story, and they may see all that has occurred since 1945 in the light of their own uncertainties during those preceding years. But having been born just after the war, I have no direct experience of it, no personal memory, no loss, no grief. Awareness of its importance in my own life is through consciousness of the important place it occupied in the lives of two people who did live through it: the soldier and the nurse who became my parents.
A few years ago, during this month of remembrance, a quiet but powerful chapter in my life, representative of the same half-century story of the local community as a whole, and indeed of the entire country, came to an end with the death of the last of my father’s siblings.
In March 1944 photographs of four soldiers, my father and his three brothers, appeared in a local newspaper article reporting on their whereabouts. They had all volunteered in 1940 and had gone their separate ways for the duration of the war. All four survived, though it was not until April 1946 that the last of them finally returned. I have often wondered how that must have felt to my grandparents: saying farewell to all four of them and not knowing if they would ever see them again; and then, having all four of them return safely home. Not only the brothers, but their parents too will have known and felt what remembrance was all about.
Every November, the poppies, the parades, the silences, the coverage of the Cenotaph and the Albert Hall: all these, built upon year by year through my parents’ thoughts, words, and quiet tears, have somehow made the war a defining part of my own life despite its having ended before I was born.
Yes, we will remember them. Not only those who died: those who never came home, but also those who did return; the men and women who lived on, and made the world that is ours today. Men like my father and his brothers: men who risked all for our sakes, and then rebuilt the security of home in their quiet lives.
One day, after the death of the last of the brothers, and as his executor, I came across his medals. He had done exactly the same as my Father. They had opened those small brown cardboard boxes, looked at the medals, and replaced them, the ribbons still unattached and folded. And there they stayed for the next fifty years. There they remain today; valued and evocative; safe in their boxes.
I also came across a small unimportant looking notebook among assorted bits and pieces; something which could so easily have been simply thrown away. It was several days before I picked it up again and opened it. It was ‘The Boys’ Diary’, as my Grandmother had called it at the top of the first page. Her handwritten record of every known move they made during the war, and every communication received from them, from the day the first one left home, to the day the last one returned, - a period of more than six years.
It is a wonderful fragment of truth from a troubled time; a time that finally came to an end for me when a surviving soldier’s ashes were placed in his parents’ grave and his generation was finally at rest. As with their return from war: all safely home, and together once more.
I remember, as a boy, watching my father close up his shop to take his place in the Remembrance Day parade, and marching through the town with the other men. I always wondered why he had no medals; everyone else seemed to. That was before my sense of awe and wonder when I first came across them. From those far off years right up to the end of his life, his face always looked different on Remembrance Day. Experiences undisclosed, faces only he could see, and names that I would never hear; all these he has somehow passed down to me. Together with that silent box and its contents, they join my awareness and appreciation of all that my parents gave to me and to my own siblings: foundations for the forming of my own very personal and very real experience of Remembrance Day and all that it should signify.
Yes. We will remember them.
At the dawning of each new day we shall remember them: all of them.
And may we who remain do as well for those who follow.
And may we who remain do as well for those who follow.
.
