Yesterday it was Remembrance Day in the UK (and in various other nations around the world, I know). I had hoped to take the Boys to see the amazing installation of ceramic poppies at the Tower of London when we were in the UK a week or so ago, but heavy traffic and a late-running doctors' appointment meant we didn't make it. Life, as ever, got in the way.
However, yesterday Boy #2 came home from school to tell me how his teacher (a South African) had shown them footage from Sunday's ceremony at the Cenotaph in Whitehall London, regaling me with his tale as if it related to events from ancient history rather than to commemorate something that happened within still-living memory.
"The ceremony happened at 11 o'clock, Mum." Do you know why that was, I asked. He didn't, so I explained about the significance of the 11th Hour of the 11th Day of the 11th Month. He nodded sombrely. "They had rows of soldiers, Mum, all saluting" he said in a low voice, as if to emphasise the importance of what he was telling me. "The Queen laid a wreath, and then a man shouted something, and all the soldiers stamped. Then, they played a tune on trumpets that didn't have any buttons on the top."
Cornets, I said. They were called 'cornets'.
And I was momentarily transported back to when I was similar age and listening to the Last Post being played on various chilly November mornings throughout the years. My sister and I used to march with our Brownie pack (and later, as Girl Guides) along with veterans, civilians, the mayor and town council, the cubs, the boy scouts, the local army, RAF and naval cadets, and so on in a parade through the very small town where I grew up, every year on whichever Sunday fell closest to 11th November. We walked from the parish church to the town square, where a stone cross embellished with the names of the local men who had fallen in World Wars I and II stood by the doctor's surgery and bus shelter, and each of the organisations represented laid their flag and a wreath on the steps of the memorial.
It seemed to me, at 8 years old standing in my best coat and uniform listening to the 2 minute silence, that the streets were heaving with poppy-wearing people who had come to pay their respects. I used to catch the bus to school from the memorial every week day and on the days that I wasn't wrapped in my own thoughts I remember marvelling at how short some of the lives commemorated on the stone had been; only 16 or 17 years long, in a couple of cases. And I especially remember that even at 8, 9, 10 years old I was struck by the horror and the pathos of realising that some family names were repeated - 3, or 4 times in some cases - denoting the fact that multiple members of the same family were commemorated as having died during the same war. Imagine being their sibling, I thought then. Imagine being their mother, I think now.
It seems so impossible to us; the white-hot fervour that drove entire families of young men to enlist. From our relatively safe 21st century existence, I don't think many of us can imagine it. But then, because 100 years ago - and more recently - they did, I don't have to.
Back in 2014, Boy #2 was still talking to me in the same low, insistent, serious voice. "And then we heard a poem, Mum. I can't remember the words, but they were good..."
Did it go; 'They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old.'? I asked.
"Yes! That was it exactly!"
And I was struck yet again how many key milestones from my childhood are not present in my sons' lives. There's little of that here, you see. I'm not saying that the Russians don't venerate and respect their war dead, they absolutely do. But the key difference is that the calendar date on which they do so is not called 'Remembrance Day' or 'Armistice Day'. It's called 'Victory Day', and that is the aspect that is publicly celebrated. It's more about military parades than about standing in silence, so that's what the Boys have known for the last 5 years.
For some reason I rarely went a Remembrance ceremony in the UK once I became an adult. I can't think why; I suspect that I simply allowed Life to get in the way. I hope, though, that if we return to the UK perhaps that might change, and my sons will get the chance to appreciate the value of standing in silence for 2 minutes to honour those who have died in their country's service. In the meantime I'm going to reproduce the relevant stanza of the poem that the Ode to Remembrance is taken from.
Lest I forget.
They shall not grow 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.
Laurence Binyon; 'For the Fallen'.
However, yesterday Boy #2 came home from school to tell me how his teacher (a South African) had shown them footage from Sunday's ceremony at the Cenotaph in Whitehall London, regaling me with his tale as if it related to events from ancient history rather than to commemorate something that happened within still-living memory.
"The ceremony happened at 11 o'clock, Mum." Do you know why that was, I asked. He didn't, so I explained about the significance of the 11th Hour of the 11th Day of the 11th Month. He nodded sombrely. "They had rows of soldiers, Mum, all saluting" he said in a low voice, as if to emphasise the importance of what he was telling me. "The Queen laid a wreath, and then a man shouted something, and all the soldiers stamped. Then, they played a tune on trumpets that didn't have any buttons on the top."
Cornets, I said. They were called 'cornets'.
And I was momentarily transported back to when I was similar age and listening to the Last Post being played on various chilly November mornings throughout the years. My sister and I used to march with our Brownie pack (and later, as Girl Guides) along with veterans, civilians, the mayor and town council, the cubs, the boy scouts, the local army, RAF and naval cadets, and so on in a parade through the very small town where I grew up, every year on whichever Sunday fell closest to 11th November. We walked from the parish church to the town square, where a stone cross embellished with the names of the local men who had fallen in World Wars I and II stood by the doctor's surgery and bus shelter, and each of the organisations represented laid their flag and a wreath on the steps of the memorial.
It seemed to me, at 8 years old standing in my best coat and uniform listening to the 2 minute silence, that the streets were heaving with poppy-wearing people who had come to pay their respects. I used to catch the bus to school from the memorial every week day and on the days that I wasn't wrapped in my own thoughts I remember marvelling at how short some of the lives commemorated on the stone had been; only 16 or 17 years long, in a couple of cases. And I especially remember that even at 8, 9, 10 years old I was struck by the horror and the pathos of realising that some family names were repeated - 3, or 4 times in some cases - denoting the fact that multiple members of the same family were commemorated as having died during the same war. Imagine being their sibling, I thought then. Imagine being their mother, I think now.
It seems so impossible to us; the white-hot fervour that drove entire families of young men to enlist. From our relatively safe 21st century existence, I don't think many of us can imagine it. But then, because 100 years ago - and more recently - they did, I don't have to.
Back in 2014, Boy #2 was still talking to me in the same low, insistent, serious voice. "And then we heard a poem, Mum. I can't remember the words, but they were good..."
Did it go; 'They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old.'? I asked.
"Yes! That was it exactly!"
And I was struck yet again how many key milestones from my childhood are not present in my sons' lives. There's little of that here, you see. I'm not saying that the Russians don't venerate and respect their war dead, they absolutely do. But the key difference is that the calendar date on which they do so is not called 'Remembrance Day' or 'Armistice Day'. It's called 'Victory Day', and that is the aspect that is publicly celebrated. It's more about military parades than about standing in silence, so that's what the Boys have known for the last 5 years.
For some reason I rarely went a Remembrance ceremony in the UK once I became an adult. I can't think why; I suspect that I simply allowed Life to get in the way. I hope, though, that if we return to the UK perhaps that might change, and my sons will get the chance to appreciate the value of standing in silence for 2 minutes to honour those who have died in their country's service. In the meantime I'm going to reproduce the relevant stanza of the poem that the Ode to Remembrance is taken from.
Lest I forget.
They shall not grow 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.
Laurence Binyon; 'For the Fallen'.
