[note: Coarse language and extreme views to follow. Cover your eyes, oh sensitive ones.]
Now, I realize that I am the sort of person who does not like terribly many things. One might go as far as to say that I dislike—perhaps even hate—a lot of objects, people, ideas and phenomena. Well, those people would be absolutely bang-on, actually, but there is one thing that pisses me off like no other... More than Hannah Montana, more than loud, vacuous people on aeroplanes, and possibly even more than having to admit that I might be wrong. That thing, ladies and gentlemen, is Remembrance Day.
For those of you on foreign shores, Remembrance Day or “Poppy Day” is a statutory holiday every 11th November, to commemorate the fallen soldiers in World Wars I and II. It’s held on that particular day to mark the end of the first World War. You know, the one that ended, uh, ninety years ago?
All through early November, elderly war veterans hang around street corners, to guilt you into donating money, by flashing their wounds at you. In return, you receive a plastic poppy pin. Seems innocent enough... I mean, being harassed by out-of-touch elderly people happens to me at just about every family gathering I’m forced to sit through, and it doesn’t make me want to drive a chair through a wall, right? (Well, not generally.)
Unfortunately, being publically accosted for money by old people is only the beginning of the problem. As required by some sort of unwritten decree of the Queen, every single goddamn school in England is required to “celebrate” Remembrance Day. Your school is fifty percent Korean and fifty percent Pakistani? Tough shit, guys, you have to remember a conflict that has absolutely fuck all to do with your lives. Oh, and probably draw a bunch of crosses, because those are clearly a universal symbol for all cultures.
Poppy Day, unlike most holidays, does not involve a class party, or even amusingly decorated fairy cakes. No, instead of having a good time, everyone has to have a serious expression on their faces, not even smiling, and sit through a two-plus hour school assembly. They start, most unpleasantly, with bagpipes, brought in by the mandatory crazy Scotsman. Shortly after, a straight-faced soldier with a chiselled jaw will make comments to the effect of “They died so that you could be free,” and “We have to fight for what we believe in.” Boil-in-the-bag sentimentality, and the bastard still fumbles with his cue cards!
At some point or another, a scrawny girl with a good smile and a stammer will take the stage and read, with absolutely no precision whatsoever, the poem “In Flanders Fields.” It goes as such:
“In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row...”
Nevermind that everyone’s heard it at least a million times before, but half of the stupid audience will inevitably start sobbing when she comes to her pathetic, whimpering stop. Odds are pretty good she’s crying too, God knows why, but she is. The headmaster or someone hastily brushes her off the stage, and signals the choir, who burst into some bullshit song about peace and love and holding hands all over the world. This comes in odd juxtaposition with the military men lining the walls, but no one seems to notice the irony. They’re too busy weeping.
Jesus, why are they always weeping?
I mean, if you’re still in school, then you weren’t around for either war. You didn’t know anyone who died in those wars, because, you know, they’re dead. They have been for multiple decades. For instance, according to the world’s most reliable source (Wikipedia) there are fifteen confirmed living veterans of World War I. Fifteen. That’s about ten percent of the people currently in the throes of sorrow, at the moment. Why the fuck do we do any of this?
I mean, to a certain extent, I can understand why we’d want to discuss the wars. They were big events for our society, and helped shaped the way we are today. Hell, were it not for the Holocaust, my grandparents would never have fled Hungary for England, and I might not currently be writing to you in the noblest of tongues... I’d be going on about paprika or some shit. In Hungarian.
But the Holocaust is never discussed in the ceremonies! They don’t talk about the technological improvements that came out of this tragedy, they don’t talk about the baby boom, they don’t even talk about the fucking Nazis. Or, I guess, Franz Ferdinand. Not even a whisper. There’s no conversation on the reconstruction of Europe, or how all this helped establish the United States as a global superpower.
The only thing we ever, ever, ever hear about is bravery. Courage. Honour.
A bunch of idealistic, short-sighted words that show absolutely no understanding of war whatsoever.
Being conscripted into a nonsense war is “brave?” Hiding behind the corpse of a fallen comrade is “honourable?” Shitting your pants as the shells rain into your trench is “brave?” And, frustratingly enough, that’s not even the biggest lie they shove up your ass during the service. You see, in amongst the discussion of victory and fighting the good fight and all that shit, we get the delightfully pathetic message of “Peace! Peace for everyone!”
It’s goddamn evil that they should brainwash us into associating soldiers, guns and death with peace. I mean, imagine that you’re six years old, and a soldier barks at you about death that happened a long time ago, then your classmates sing about motherfucking peace? If that isn’t propaganda, then I don’t know what fucking is.
So, what do I suggest to change? Well, if it were up to me, which it unfortunately isn’t, we wouldn’t do this anymore. We can spend a half-hour history lesson learning about it, rather than a half-month. We can take our moment of silence for the victims of AIDS, the victims of hate crime, the victims of 7/7. Whatever.
Alternately, we can implement a statute of limitations on all war-based ceremonies.
One hundred years after the end of a war, it is treated as a piece of history, rather than an overblown personal tragedy. Then, not only would we only have ten more years of WWI and thirty years of WWII, but we’d be able to move on from our old ideals, gradually. I may not have known them, but I guarantee you that my slaughtered relations (of which there were many) would much prefer that we shut up about it. Then, they could eat their fish soup in peace.
And maybe, just maybe, my children, far off in the future, would never have to suffer through another shitty reading of “In Flanders Fields.” I mean, that’s a much more reasonable request than world peace, don’t you think?
