91Èȱ¬

Americanisation - Bah Humbug! After years of watching the Last Night of the Proms, I have given up because of Americanisation - the occasion just isn't what it was. Now, we have a presenter of the Service of Remembrance who can't even pronounce "Lieutenant" - he seems to think our service personnel have joined the American Forces even more directly than they have in reality. Coca-colonisation by the Colonists! Sorry, but it just jars my nerves every time he mispronounces "Lieutenant". Can't the 91Èȱ¬ afford to update its pronunciation handbook, or let him have a copy of the relevant bit?

Remembrance Day should be for those who sacrificed their lives in the 1st & 2nd World Wars (& a 3rd World War if there is going to be one - God forbid)(if we are still here to commemorate it).

For such a day to be 'hijacked' to include other wars (especially those not declared) is obscene - especially the 'War on Terror" manufactured by the "International Community" (ie the US)(seen by most as a "rogue state")

#2

I don't know why is significant but these folk obviously agree with your opening sentence.

Try writing in the same Brownian space-time.
Each time I feel the same unctuous sensation
Curving words with you curled on my shoulder.
Ready to repeat my broken dream back again.
But why, this is Illyria, Like Einstein I travelled
In a straight line, even with acceleration to get here.
Only inside I feel static; like listening to a speech
About working families and prosperity
And democracy and absolutely no
Deals over and over
Again.

I listened to Mark Whitaker's "Poppies are Red, Cornflowers are Blue". A great insight into how the poppy came to represent remembrance day.

I visited Nice last year and was moved by the influential scale and the serious gravity of the La Ville de Nice a Ses Fils Morts Pour la France.

To this I dedicated a blog... which is really a dedica to all who were lost in the great wars.

Ekklesia's report is a comprehensive review of the history, theory, and practice of remembrance and demands serious consideration, especially, I venture to suggest, in Northern Ireland.Ìý

I write here as a convinced absolutist pacifist from a family with generations of military service so it is not surprising perhaps that I have the most mixed feelings about remembrance. I am afraid I can never bring myself to wear a poppy of any hue.

I have nonetheless the most intense compassion for those young men and women, many of them probably from areas of social, economic, and educational disadvantage, who risk their lives and face hardship and danger daily for a cause they almost certainly do not understand.Ìý

When one reads the letters and poems written home by some of the fallen one is forced to concede, against the grain, that there is something potentially ennobling about the experience of such extreme adversity, something which awakens sensibilities not likely to be found in their contemporaries who have not faced the same challenges.Ìý

War is the greatest of evils but, as well as bringing out the worst in mankind, it also somehow brings out the best. While it is essential to ensure the horrors are understood we should not fail to honour the courage and bravery of those ordinary guys who face fear and overcome it, whose deeds are in some way glorious, who even, in some cases, do make present again the self-sacrifice of Christ.

In an age of selfishness, individualism, and cynicism ordinary soldiers remind us of community, service and even a certain plain decency. For me the most memorable and perhaps important words of the day were those of the seriously injured Michael Stoker when he said that he wanted to face the horrors of the battlefield again for his mates. There is, sorry Ekklesia, a Biblical quotation which springs to mind.

Ìý

I never attended a Remembrance Sunday, nor wore a poppy, and when I prayed for the fallen (all of them) I always included a prayer that our rememberance would include a real committment to never allow what happened to these poor men and women to happen to anyone ever again.

Recently while working on a transatlantic ship, I had a quiet chat on the deck with the captain. The conversation turned to the wars. It was a calm sunny day and I commented that it must have been terrible for these young soldiers when the weather was rough.

He smiled at my ignorance then told me that actually the young men prayed for stormy weather, it was more difficult for the U-boats to find them in a force 10.

An inkling of the horror and of the bravery hit home, probably for the first time. I thought of the thousands who died at sea.

I had two or three hundred consecrated hosts in my cabin. That night, when the restaurants, bars and night clubs were full, I went back out into the stillness and quietness and darkness, and cast the breads into the sea.

(I told the folk at church later in the week that I had not brought enough breads with me.)

RJB - a wonderful story full of the compassion I would now expect. How strange though that you relate it - you could have had absolutely no idea of just how much it would mean to me...

Parr

Weird eh?
Obviously I dont know what it means to you, and actually my mind was on other things last night so I cant even think of why I related it.

I cant even get on a P&0 ferry now without thinking of those young men and women and what they suffered.

Smithy - are you the Cruise Line Rent-a-Priest?

You just dumped the Blessed Sacrament into the ocean. You're a totally crazy dude.