On Remembrance Sunday this year Dean Chris called upon us then (and later reminded us in The Chronicle) “. . . to live differently . . . not to glorify war . . . [but to hear] the voice of Christ saying, ‘Follow me’. We went on, following that day’s Eucharist, to listen to the bugle calls, and to remember those killed in war as symbolised by the red poppies of Flanders Field.
My memory of red poppies dates to primary school before the Second World War where they were part of our Armistice Day remembrance. As such, they were of course wholly appropriate because the horrors of the slaughter perpetrated (by both sides) in Flanders during what was then called the Great War were, twenty years later, very much in the minds of those who had survived.
What had made the horrors far worse was that the slaughter had arisen not from a valiant attempt to fight evil in any particular form but from such factors as the incompetence of the military authorities, the then-recent advent of new military technology, and a family quarrel among Queen Victoria’s grandchildren concerning who was going to rule over which parts of Europe and other places in the world.
The Second World War was a quite different matter in the fight against evil, although even then it was not recognised just how different until the war had ended. Flanders did not play the same role in this war. For me, the focus was London where I remember being bombed during the blitz, and later assaulted by flying bombs and rockets, although I was not old enough to be involved in throwing any back. That came three years later when I was caught up in the not-quite-a-war known as the Berlin airlift.
The Second World War is still a memory for many people if only because their parents or grandparents have spoken of it to them. Looking around in the Cathedral, however, I wonder what it was that they were told. Not many, I believe, would have been told of the London blitz, and even fewer of Flanders.
Uppermost in the minds of people today, I suggest, are contemporary situations marked, among other things, by the fact that most of the victims of the wars that we hear of around us are civilians, not service people. Bugle calls and poppies do not resonate with those victims, although bombs may.
The question, then, is what symbol should we use in remembering war? Setting aside Flanders Field, a clue is given, I believe, in the accompanying contribution in The Chronicle by Stephen Wright describing the Cross of Nails and post-war initiatives taken by people at Coventry Cathedral. (Mother Areeta, also, spoke of these initiatives in her Remembrance Day sermon two years ago.) Which would now be the more appropriate symbol in our remembrances of war: the Flanders Poppy or the Cross of Nails?
Leslie Buck