The Book of the Poppy

by Chris McNab

  As a result, war memorials proliferated. Furthermore, Britain established rites of remembrance that would unify the nation in its loss. The first step was to set a specific day of commemoration. The natural choice was 11 November. For on that day – the eleventh day of the eleventh month – the guns fell silent on the Western Front, as the Armistice came into effect. The 1919 anniversary of this day was earmarked as Armistice Day, and it was to be both a day of remembrance plus a celebration of the victory that had been so hard won. To this day, a period of silence is observed nationally and in many countries around the world at 11 a.m. on 11 November, but the main UK day of remembrance was moved to the second Sunday in the month, known as ‘Remembrance Sunday’.

  In London, the official State participation in Remembrance Sunday had a new focal point. The Cenotaph monument, set on Whitehall, was designed by the renowned architect Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens. It was initially a temporary wood and marble structure, erected for the London Victory Parade on 19 July 1919. (This was held to celebrate the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on 28 June.) After the event, the base of the memorial accrued various wreaths and tokens of remembrance, so a campaign gathered pace to keep the Cenotaph, but replace the temporary structure with a permanent stone edifice, albeit one keeping faithfully to the original design. Thus the Cenotaph was rebuilt from Portland Stone between 1919 and 1920, and this is the memorial that stands today, unveiled by King George V on 11 November 1920.

  The Cenotaph has a strangely austere quality to it. Many other memorials around the UK personalise the British soldier in statuary, depicting figures of men carved or cast with astonishing attention to detail in terms of expression, kit and weaponry. The Cenotaph, by contrast, is monolithic, a huge column of stone, 35ft (11m) high and topped by the gaunt cenotaph (an empty tomb). At each end is a wreath, 5ft (1.5m) in diameter, displaying the words ‘The Glorious Dead’ below, while above are the dates of the First World War in Roman numerals (1914 – MCMXIV; 1919 – MCMXIX). Flags representing the various arms of service are displayed on either side of the monument.

  Since 1919, the Cenotaph has been the focus of the National Service of Remembrance, typically attended by key members of the government and royal family, plus visiting foreign dignitaries. At first it was very much a national event, concentrating exclusively on the British war dead, a focus refreshed by the additional third of a million dead suffered during the Second World War. Yet time has changed the perspective somewhat. In 1980, it was decided that Remembrance Sunday should properly be an act of remembrance for all those who have died in conflict, regardless of their nationality or the war in which they lost their lives.

  Of course, the Cenotaph is not the only national-level war memorial in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Unveiled on 12 October 2007, the Armed Forces Memorial near Lichfield in Staffordshire remembers the 16,000 British soldiers killed in conflicts post-1945. In Northern Ireland, Belfast has its own Cenotaph, set in a Garden of Remembrance. In Alexandra Gardens, Cardiff, there is the Welsh National War Memorial designed by Sir Ninian Comper and unveiled in June 1928. On the outer frieze of the colonnaded design is the Welsh inscription: I FEIBION CYMRU A RODDES EU BYWYD DROS EI GWLAD YN RHYFEL MCMXVIII, which translates as ‘To the sons of Wales who gave their lives for their country in the War 1918.’ In Scotland, the Scottish National War Memorial sits in the stunning location of Edinburgh Castle, towering over the city. Rolls of Honour inside the memorial list the names of nearly 200,000 Scottish people who died in the two world wars.

  Space does not allow us here to list many of the other great memorials that stretch throughout our land. The bulk of them date from the First World War years and the 1920s–30s, as the act of war-memorial building was not as enthusiastically embraced following the Second World War. (What we often find is that the names of those killed in the Second World War are added to the monument from the previous conflict.) Each ceremony on Remembrance Sunday has its own power and conviction, yet there are some features of the service that unite the country in its reflection upon conflict.

  SOME FAMOUS INTERNATIONAL WAR MEMORIALS

  POWERFUL WORDS, POWERFUL SILENCE

  In 1914, as the first dreadful casualty lists began to flow back to Britain from France and Belgium, the poet Robert Laurence Binyon composed a verse entitled ‘For the Fallen’, which was published in The Times in September. Although Binyon is likely to have been proud of the verse, he would have had little inkling at that early stage of the war how influential parts of the poem would become. In full, his poem read:

  For the Fallen

  With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,

  England mourns for her dead across the sea.

  Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,

  Fallen in the cause of the free.

  Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal

  Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.

  There is music in the midst of desolation

  And a glory that shines upon our tears.

  They went with songs to the battle, they were young,

  Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.

  They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,

  They fell with their faces to the foe.

  They shall grow not old, as we 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.

  They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;

  They sit no more at familiar tables of home;

  They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;

  They sleep beyond England’s foam.

  But where our desires are and our hopes profound,

  Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,

  To the innermost heart of their own land they are known

  As the stars are known to the Night;

  As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,

  Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,

  As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,

  To the end, to the end, they remain.

  Robert Laurence Binyon

  To see the poem complete, rather than just focus on the well-known fourth stanza, brings a sense of the gulf between the attitudes to war in 1914 and those that prevailed just a few years later. The poem is undoubtedly patriotic, seeing a nobility and grandeur in conflict that had been largely purged by 1918. The soldiers advancing to meet their fates are ‘straight’, ‘true’ and ‘steady’ – any suggestion of fear is absent. And yet, there are moments of transcendent beauty in this poem, especially the fourth stanza. Such was the emotive power of this passage that it was separated from the rest of the poem to become the familiar Ode of Remembrance, still read out with solemnity at remembrance services in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and other Commonwealth nations. It is an acutely moving passage, combining eternity and mortality and a clear statement of intent by those who are alive: ‘We will remember them’. Although the overall poem from which it came does not chime well with the modern age, Binyon nevertheless left a powerful and timeless verse that is likely to endure for decades, if not centuries.

  In the remembrance services, Binyon’s verse sits next to a period of two minutes’ silence, held in respect of the world’s war dead. For visitors to the UK who do not have this tradition, the experience can be moving, even startling. At 11 a.m. on 11 November (or on the following Sunday), much of the country simply stops, comes to its feet, and stands with heads bowed in silence for a period of two minutes. Businesses, schools, shopping centres, sports fixtures, government buildings – all make this unique gesture every year, a reflective break in the middle of a bustling day.

  The idea of the two-minute silence was put forward by Australian journalist Edward George Honey in a letter to The Times in May 1919. It was embraced by the public, government and royalty, althou
gh there was initially some debate about the appropriate period for which silence had to be held. Five minutes was the initial suggestion, but this was felt to be too long, and the alternative one minute too short. Hence the two-minute silence was adopted, and on 7 November 1919, King George V declared that:

  At the hour when the Armistice comes into force, the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, there may be for the brief space of two minutes a complete suspension of all our normal activities … so that in perfect stillness, the thoughts of everyone may be concentrated on reverent remembrance of the glorious dead.

  THE LAST POST

  ‘The Last Post’ is a haunting bugle or trumpet call heard during British and Commonwealth Remembrance Day services, and at other commemorative events throughout the year. Its origins lie back in the British Army of the seventeenth century, when the call was played at the end of the day to signal that night sentries were at their posts and the day was effectively over. (‘The First Post’ signalled the start of an officer’s evening inspections.) In time, the call was incorporated into military funerals and acts of remembrance. Since 1928 it has also been played every day at 8 p.m. at the Menin Gate war memorial in Ieper (Ypres) in Belgium.

  WAR GRAVES

  Even today, after a century of time has passed, the battlefields of the First World War keep relinquishing the dead. In 2007–08, for example, mass burial pits that had lain undisturbed for ninety years were discovered on the outskirts of Fromelles in northern France. They contained the bodies of 250 Commonwealth soldiers (mostly Australians) who had been killed in the Battle of Fromelles (a subsidiary operation to the Battle of the Somme) on 19 July 1916, and were subsequently buried by the Germans in communal graves.

  Upon the discovery of the bodies, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) began attempting to identify the dead, analysing the surviving artefacts around the bodies and using modern DNA analysis techniques. Ultimately, the bodies consisted of 205 Australians (ninety-six of whom the CWGC identified by name) plus three British soldiers and the rest ‘unknowns’. A special cemetery was constructed in 2009–10, known as the Fromelles (Pheasant Wood) Military Cemetery, and the bodies were eventually laid to rest with full military honours.

  Military cemeteries are unique places of remembrance. Some are relatively small, tucked away in distant locations. The Gravesend Military Cemetery in Bridgetown, Barbados, for example, is a CWGC cemetery containing the bodies of just nine individuals, all killed in action between 1942 and 1944. At the other end of the extreme are the huge, almost disorientating cemeteries and memorials in Western Europe, of which the following are representative. The Fricourt German War Cemetery contains the bodies of 17,027 German soldiers, while the Douamont Ossuary on the Verdun battlefield site contains the bones of more than 130,000 unidentified soldiers, the remains taken from the devastating battle of 1916. The Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery and Memorial, the largest American burial site in Europe, has 14,246 graves spread over 130 acres (52 hectares). The huge Thiepval Memorial to the Missing displays the names of 73,357 British and Allied soldiers who died in the Somme area between 1916 and 1918, but who have no official grave.

  The cemeteries and memorials listed are just a handful from one particular conflict. In fact, there are thousands of military cemeteries around the world, some kept with a military eye for cleanliness and detail, others neglected and forgotten beneath overgrown foliage. For the British and Commonwealth countries, the job of maintaining the war cemeteries falls to the CWGC.

  COMMONWEALTH WAR GRAVES COMMISSION – KEY FACTS

  The CWGC was the vision of one man, Sir Fabian Ware, who during the First World War was the commander of a mobile unit of the British Red Cross. Seeing at first hand the levels of casualties, and noting the frequently chaotic processes of burial and body identification, he established the Graves Registration Commission, which received a royal charter in May 1917 to become the Imperial War Graves Commission (IWGC), and subsequently the CWGC.

  In the aftermath of the Armistice, the Commission set about trying to identify the dead, record their details and rationalise the system of cemeteries. By the end of 1918 they had identified 587,000 graves, plus named 559,000 individuals who had no known grave. This was just the beginning of the CWGC’s work. Today the organisation cares for cemeteries, graves and memorials in 153 countries around the world, at a total of 23,000 locations. The number of war dead represented through this critical work now totals 1.7 million. The guiding principles of the CWGC in all this work are as follows:

  Each of the dead should be commemorated by a name on the headstone or memorial

  Headstones and memorials should be permanent

  Headstones should be uniform

  There should be no distinction made on account of military or civil rank, race or creed.

  The two central themes of this list are ‘permanence’ and ‘equality’. Unlike the military memorials of centuries past, the CWGC cemeteries and memorials recognise that all the soldiers who died deserve enduring respect, regardless of rank or position.

  TOMB OF THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER

  One of the many tragedies of the First World War was that so many of the war dead found no permanent grave. Many were hastily buried in crude holes cut into active battlefields, and their rudimentary grave markers were subsequently lost or destroyed in the confusion of action. Thousands were buried in communal graves, their identities often lost in the mass of humanity they lay amongst. Others simply went ‘missing’, many destroyed beyond recognition by high explosive.

  For the families of these men and women, the tragedy of their loss was compounded by the complete absence of a grave over which to mourn. This truth was recognised by one Reverend David Railton, a British clergyman serving on the Western Front in 1916, but in a back garden at Armentieres, France, he saw a possible solution. There stood a crude cross bearing the simple words ‘An Unknown British Soldier’. The sight left an impression on Railton, and in 1920, with the war over, he wrote to the Dean of Westminster Abbey, Herby Ryle, suggesting that a single tomb be established in the Abbey containing the body of one unidentified British soldier. Thus placed, the soldier would serve almost as the national representative for all the missing and unidentified dead.

  REMEMBERING THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER

  Below is part of the eulogy delivered by the Australian Prime Minister, Paul Keating, at the funeral service of the Unknown Australian Soldier, 11 November 1993:

  We do not know this Australian’s name and we never will. We do not know his rank or his battalion. We do not know where he was born, nor precisely how and when he died. We do not know where in Australia he had made his home or when he left it for the battlefields of Europe. We do not know his age or his circumstances – whether he was from the city or the bush; what occupation he left to become a soldier; what religion, if he had a religion; if he was married or single. We do not know who loved him or whom he loved. If he had children we do not know who they are. His family is lost to us as he was lost to them. We will never know who this Australian was.

  Yet he has always been among those whom we have honoured. We know that he was one of the 45,000 Australians who died on the Western Front. One of the 416,000 Australians who volunteered for service in the First World War. One of the 324,000 Australians who served overseas in that war and one of the 60,000 Australians who died on foreign soil. One of the 100,000 Australians who have died in wars this century.

  He is all of them. And he is one of us.

  The suggestion (which had also been made by the Daily Express newspaper) was adopted by the British Government, and plans for the internment were made. However, there was the sensitive issue of how to select the body. The solution was to gather a number of unidentified remains from various former battlefields and place them on stretchers in a chapel at Saint-Pol-sur-Ternoise near Arras, on the night of 7 November 1920. Two officers, Brigadier-General L.J. Wyatt and Lieutenant-Colonel E.A.S. Gell of the Directorate of Graves
Registration, later visited the chapel alone, where Brigadier-General Wyatt selected one of the bodies simply by placing his hand on it. This process was followed to ensure that considerations of rank, birth, politics and other factors did not feature in the selection.

  The journey of the body to its final resting place in Westminster Abbey on 11 November 1920 was a humbling sight, the casket drawn through the streets of London on a horse-drawn gun carriage, thousands of onlookers completely silent at its passage. It stopped before the Cenotaph, which then received its unveiling, before journeying on to the Abbey, where the casket was interred in the far western end of the nave, buried in soil actually brought from the battlefields. At the same time, an unknown soldier was buried at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, the French also making this unique act of remembrance.

  INSCRIPTION ON THE TOMB OF THE UNKNOWN WARRIOR, WESTMINSTER ABBEY

  BENEATH THIS STONE RESTS THE BODY

  OF A BRITISH WARRIOR

  UNKNOWN BY NAME OR RANK

  BROUGHT FROM FRANCE TO LIE AMONG

  THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS OF THE LAND

  AND BURIED HERE ON ARMISTICE DAY

  11 NOV: 1920, IN THE PRESENCE OF

  HIS MAJESTY KING GEORGE V