Last year I didn’t wear a Remembrance Poppy. I felt that the symbol was losing its meaning as memorial to the dead in the two World Wars, and had been taken over by jingoistic militarists, especially the racists of the far-right.
This year was different.
Back in September I went to see Fish play at the Arts Centre in Pontardawe in South Wales, on the tour promoting his new album. The centrepiece of that record is a twenty-minute song cycle entitled “The High Wood Suite”, inspired by the World War One Battle of the Somme in which both his grandfathers fought.
Fish gave a long introduction telling the inspiration behind it; his grandfather in the entrenchment division digging trenches through ground filled with the bodies torn apart by shellfire. He told the story of the Lad’s Battalions, drawn from small communities just like Pontardawe, who fought and died together, entire communities sometimes wiped out in a morning.
There was nothing heroic about this. No noble self-sacrifice for a justified cause. This, as Fish made abundantly clear, was mass murder on an industrial scale. Read this angry piece by Charlie Stross – World War One killed five percent of Britain’s adult male population, and crippled another ten percent. And French casualties were even higher.
This is what we must never forget.
I remember spending several minutes after the show staring at the war memorial right outside the venue, looking at the list of names.
I saw Fish again on the 6th of November on the final night of the tour. There were a great many poppies worn in the audience. I’lll let him have the final word: these lyrics are the closing verses of “The Leaving”, the sombre final song from The High Wood Suite.
It had to end, the armies broken
One side had lost but who had won
The ravaged land, the decimation
So hard to bear, the loss and pain
The men returned, the war was over
The bells rang out, a country cheered
Behind their eyes they stored the horrors
Behind their smiles they hid their fears
The medals and the honours were handed out
to those who served
The letters of condolences were kept
Reminding generations of the sacrifices made
The suffering and the torment
of the men most never knew,
Lest we forget
– Derek W Dick, 2013
So what right-wing backpfeifengesicht thought putting the inventor on the concentration camp on the new £2 coin was a jolly good idea?