Poppy Day

[Deadlift]

http://www.britishlegion.org.uk/


Its November and its time to remember those that stand and have stood between us and those that would do us harm.

So to all those servicemen and women that frequent these boards, from me "Thank you"

So wear your poppy with pride and show you support those men and women who make the sacrifices and we appreciate what they have done and continue to do in our name.

[DrLove42]

Indeed. Need to go buy mine.

[MaltonNecromancer]

I've never served. I never will. I despise war; everything about it is wrong. It's pointless cruel, and barbaric in every imaginable way. No-one should have to fight. I have nothing but respect for all branches, and all the serving women and men of our armed forces.

When I was a young man, I wore a poppy for my Grandad John. He was in the Irish Guards, fighting the ****s on the front line during WW2. He died when I was ten - a German gas attack had ruined his lungs, and the injury finally caught up with him, all those years later. He was only 59. He was also the kindest, most loving man you could ever hope to meet. Upon his death, I was distraught.

Now I am an older man, I wear a poppy for him, and for an ex-pupil, Liam. It was my first year teaching, and Liam was a "bad boy". He would undoubtedly have been described as the "class clown", or simply a pain in the hole, because he was loud, frequently obnoxious, and almost always mucking around. I liked him tremendously. I spent six months trying to cram as much poetry into his head as I could to get him through his GCSEs, and he always gave it a go. Never really got it, but he always tried. A few years later, I saw his picture in the paper, after he was killed in Afghanistan by a car bomb. He was 21.

21.

I'm sure he felt he was fighting for his country. I think we would have disagreed over whether that was a good enough reason for him to die, because I don't think it was anywhere near good enough.

I wear my poppy for them both, and for all those brave women and men killed for reasons that I will never find adequate.

I have great admiration for the courage of those in the armed forces. I don't think your lives, bodies and minds are a price worth paying, but I have nothing but respect for the fact that you do. So this is a very sincere "thank you" to you, as well as an admonishment: please, all of you, take care.

[Cap'nSmurfs]

As a complement to the RBL campaign, for those of a pacifist leaning (hi!), there are also the white poppies of peace. As a way to respect those who were killed or maimed in war, and to support the notion that we should never subject people to the same horrors again.

http://www.ppu.org.uk/whitepoppy/index.html

[SotonShades]

And a big thank you from me too. I have taken to wearing my poppy until it falls apart. Last year's was still on my coat in June. I have never served and never will thanks to my eye-sight. I probably wouldn't be able to get through the fitness tests anyway. I do however have nothing but respect for all those in the armed services who are, and have been in the past, only too willing to go out and put their necks on the line to ensure that we are able to live the safe and comfortable lives we do.

On Rememberance Sunday, I shall be braving the British weather to attend the memorial service at the small cenotaph in our village. To this day one of my proudest memories is carrying the Union Flag at that service many years ago and being thanked by a veteran of the second world war for lowering it with proper respect. I still have no clue how else I would have lowered it, but seeing the rpide in that old gentleman's eyes remembering those who gave their lives for us was all but overwhelming.

[Psychosplodge]

It was in my original plan but life/health got in the way, and it's the least that anyone can do to support those doing what they aren't.



I also think there is no place to play politics with the imo offensive white poppy, it's simply removing funds from probably the best placed organisation to help those that need it.

[Phototoxin]

I don't wear one as I don't think war deserves encouraging in any way shape or form.

[Denzark]

I don't wear one as I don't think war deserves encouraging in any way shape or form.



Poppys don't encourage war. They commemorate those who fought it to preserve your basic freedoms. In the last 2 world wars, conscription was in force. This meant that not everyone was a willing participant. The funds go and help those participants with all the ills that come afterwards, and their families - those non-combatants left behind.

The fact is that your freedom to choose what symbols to wear was preserved by the people the poppys commemorate. Funnily enough in Germany in the 30s/40s choice of symbol was mandatory - star of David, red/pink triangles, etc. You are either uninformed or just plain wrong.

[Cap'nSmurfs]

If we're lauding freedom, it's Phototoxin's freedom to believe and wear what they like, so attacking them for expressing that opinion isn't actually doing the cause of freedom any favours.

World war one wasn't fought for freedom (this is a statement of fact). The second one was, partly, maaaaaybe, but so many other things besides that it'd be a real kettle of fish to get into.

Remember the dead and the maimed, and reject war.

(unless it's toy war, that's cool!)

[Denzark]

I suggest you read the first line of Deadlink's OP, underneath the link. This is what it is about. You have said statement of fact - I think my first sentence is a statement of fact. Poppies do not encourage nor celebrate war. Fact.

[Wolfshade]

Interesting peice on how the poppies are made: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20226155

[Psychosplodge]

I'd thought they were all hand assembled...

[Phototoxin]

Poppys don't encourage war. They commemorate those who fought it to preserve your basic freedoms. In the last 2 world wars, conscription was in force. This meant that not everyone was a willing participant. The funds go and help those participants with all the ills that come afterwards, and their families - those non-combatants left behind.


Actually being Irish, we mostly fought the British to win our freedoms! I see your point, but it still seems to glorify it. These days men aren't conscripted into the British Army so I don't see the issue or even why we still have it since we have remembrance day.

[Cap'nSmurfs]

It's a good point. One of the problems I have with it is that it venerates our war dead/maimed over those they've killed/maimed - and given that this is Britain we're talking about, an uncomfortable number of those people were trying to preserve their freedom against us. They may not "encourage war", but they certainly place the British soldier into a hierarchy of value way above civilians and infinitely above their victims, whether they "deserved" it or not, while ignoring the other victims of war. This incarnation of remembrance - and it's not how any of this stuff was intended, remember - is a contributor to a militarisation of culture. That's problematic, and it's what's offputting for me as well.

Which is never, ever to say that we shouldn't remember and support those who are put in harms way - we don't do nearly enough for our own veterans, never mind all those other people as it is.

[Wildeybeast]

It's a good point. One of the problems I have with it is that it venerates our war dead/maimed over those they've killed/maimed - and given that this is Britain we're talking about, an uncomfortable number of those people were trying to preserve their freedom against us. They may not "encourage war", but they certainly place the British soldier into a hierarchy of value way above civilians and infinitely above their victims, whether they "deserved" it or not, while ignoring the other victims of war. This incarnation of remembrance - and it's not how any of this stuff was intended, remember - is a contributor to a militarisation of culture. That's problematic, and it's what's offputting for me as well.

Which is never, ever to say that we shouldn't remember and support those who are put in harms way - we don't do nearly enough for our own veterans, never mind all those other people as it is.

The opposite side in any conflict can commemorate their dead in any way they see fit, it is not our place to do so. In fact it would be incredibly hypocritical and probably deeply offensive to say to the enemy 'sorry about killing all your soldiers, terribly bad luck old chap'. Further more, name me one war we have participated in since the first world war where we have been repressing people's freedom. The RB: is about supporting those injured and killed in war, not the process of war.
The RBL is about supporting those injured and killed in conflict, not about supporting war. I

[tawelwch]

Further more, name me one war we have participated in since the first world war where we have been repressing people's freedom.

That's a very subective thing to make an opinion on.

[Wildeybeast]

That's a very subective thing to make an opinion on.

It is indeed, which is why I asked Capnsmurfs to name which wars he felt were ones where people were defending their freedom against Britain as I can think of any.

[Cap'nSmurfs]

It's pretty easy to do so. I'm an historian, this is my thing. :) The problem is that for most of its existence, the UK has been an imperial power, and its armed forces have been deployed for imperial ends. Fighting for "freedom" has only really come into it in a post-1945 world, and even then patchily. Many of our interventions around the globe have been to reinforce our interests, or prop up client governments against popular movements. Even recently the string of "humanitarian interventions" is guided by neo-imperialistic principles.

But you asked a question, so here's a few:

Immediately before World War One, you have a whole horrorshow of awfulness: the Boer War, the Boxer Rebellion, Churchill's gas-bombing escapades...

World war one wasn't about anybody's freedom, but a struggle between empires. It was won when our strategy of starving the German population into submission through a naval blockade finally worked and they had a revolution.

Putting down the Irish revolutions in 1921. Have you read up on the Black and Tans? Using shell-shocked WW1 veterans to bully the Irish, including participating in a few notable massacres.

World War Two - this is such a difficult one. The majority narrative of the Fight For Freedom is partly justified. But it wasn't about the Jews, gypsies or mentally ill who were being massacred in the holocaust - that was a later justification. Read up on the Daily Mail and other papers' reactions to Jewish refugees in the 1930s, it's awful. The struggles in the pacific ocean were fights involving nascent pacific empires (the US and Japan) and the crumbling British empire. We didn't fight the Afrika Corps in north africa just so those countries could have an independent foreign policy, either! And in the aftermath, well - the faustian bargain we'd made with the USSR, which did most of the heavy lifting in killing-fascists terms, ended up with eastern Europe subject to miserable dictatorship for 50 years, while in Greece, which we'd decided should remain in our "zone of control", they suffered a military coup and dictatorship themselves for some decades. It's a horrorshow, but also the most apocalyptic of world conflicts, so you can understand (if not condone) some of this stuff.

We backed the Dutch against Indonesian independence against 1946.

We were fighting both Palestinian and Zionist insurgents in Palestine for much of the early 20th century until the creation of Israel. Both were (mostly) local populations fighting against the British Empire.

For what it's worth, the USA put pressure on us to allow Indian independence. Our war reconstruction loans were tied to dismantling the Empire. In India we had imprisoned many pacifist and independence campaigners, including Nehru during World War Two.

Suez, 1956. The revolutionary Egyptian government wasn't democratically elected, but it was populist, and nationalising the Suez canal was a move taken for Egyptian interests, which the two imperial powers thought they could interfere with, like the old days. Slapped down by the USA, in one of their best foreign policy interventions.

Incidentally, the UK and the US were also responsible for springing the Shah of Iran from jail, where he had been imprisoned as a fascist collaborator, sweeping him to power to impose his tyranny against the democratically elected Mossadegh government. Mossadegh was nationalising Iranian oil, which we decided we couldn't allow. The Shah was a monster whose secret police service were notorious for their brutality. This all blew up in our faces with the revolution of the Ayatollahs.

We were also involved in the first convulsions of what would become the Vietnam conflict in the late 40s.

There's a few middle eastern interventions - Oman is one of them - where we were helping prop up the governments against their people, but I don't know the details of those so well.

We've been doing a little better recently - partly because we've accepted, more or less, that we aren't am Empire anymore - but it's still the case that many - not all - of the Iraqi and Afghan insurgents aren't ideologically driven lunatics, but just people fighting against an occupying power. The people who don't want us there, who've lost family and friends as a result of our actions. This always happens in war.

You can feel free to disagree with any or all of these. I think you'd be wrong to do so. The wider point is really that nations don't have friends, they don't have principles, they have interests, and an army is a tool of those interests. Which is why y'can support soldiers without supporting the wars they fight: they don't sign up with any choice about where they're sent, that's done by politicians.

[Wildeybeast]

I did say post WW1 after the inception of the poppy appeal. WW1 was just a big mess, no one comes out of that with any glory. I know about the motivations for WW2 and it not being about the Jews (there were a couple of them who managed to escape and get over here to tell us what was happening and begged us to bomb the train line carrying people to the death camps but we didn't a)believe it was that bad b)consider it a good use of military resources). It was however about liberating the rest of Europe from **** control, so that one is a win for us.

The use of British soldiers in Ireland and other former colonies has always been problematic and it's a difficult one to justify at times. Some places have prospered since independence, some places are a godawful mess and would have been better if we'd stayed (though that was their choice to make) and some would have been better if we'd simply never been there in the first place.

I agree with your point about the soldiers being blameless, which is why I think the Poppy Appeal is a good thing, I'm just doubtful about your conception of fighting for their freedom. Freedom to do what? In Israel, the Zionists wanted freedom to repress Palestinians? The Palestinians wanted freedom to blow up buses of children? The Iranians and Vietnamese wanted freedom to put in place repressive and backward regimes? I just think, other than WW2, there are very few conflicts Britain has been involved in the 20th century where it is black and white enough to paint us as either good guys or bad. I guess my main point is that such a conversation has no place in one regarding the Poppy Appeal and Remembrance Day.

[Psychosplodge]

Actually being Irish, we mostly fought the British to win our freedoms! I see your point, but it still seems to glorify it. These days men aren't conscripted into the British Army so I don't see the issue or even why we still have it since we have remembrance day.

I'm pretty sure it commemorates Irish war dead too, and Probably more Irishmen have fought and died in the British army than against it.




Suez, 1956. The revolutionary Egyptian government wasn't democratically elected, but it was populist, and nationalising the Suez canal was a move taken for Egyptian interests, which the two imperial powers thought they could interfere with, like the old days. Slapped down by the USA, in one of their best foreign policy interventions.


I'm pretty sure the US would have done the same if had been the panama canal that was potentially going to allow limited access. Wasn't Suez about allowing equal access to all to the canal? Something that wouldn't really affect the US.

[Denzark]

Actually being Irish, we mostly fought the British to win our freedoms! I see your point, but it still seems to glorify it. These days men aren't conscripted into the British Army so I don't see the issue or even why we still have it since we have remembrance day.

The poppy appeal started in America, then transferred over here. The original factories and poppies were designed to be something that disabled (ie by war) could make. the current poppy appeal tends to commemorate commonwealth soldiers - this would include the Irish soldiers ho during WWI were British subjects anyway. Many from the South, later the republic, fought in both WWI and WWII - hundreds of thousands - I would hope that persons in the South could see poppies as good if only remembering 'their' compatriots, who, even if they fought for the Brits were surely fighting a greater evil, especially in WWII.


It's a good point. One of the problems I have with it is that it venerates our war dead/maimed over those they've killed/maimed - and given that this is Britain we're talking about, an uncomfortable number of those people were trying to preserve their freedom against us. They may not "encourage war", but they certainly place the British soldier into a hierarchy of value way above civilians and infinitely above their victims, whether they "deserved" it or not, while ignoring the other victims of war. This incarnation of remembrance - and it's not how any of this stuff was intended, remember - is a contributor to a militarisation of culture. That's problematic, and it's what's offputting for me as well.

You are trying to imply things which don't exist. I wouldn't say there is any veneration, and I wouldn't say the rememberance is purely aimed at our soldiers. There is no 'hierarchy of value' implied or explicit from the poppies. The Poppy appeal in itself does not militarise culture - although I may concede that the Government likes to bask in reflected glory from its armed forces. If you claim that factor to be a militarisation of culture, how do you explain near constant defence cuts?

Which is never, ever to say that we shouldn't remember and support those who are put in harms way - we don't do nearly enough for our own veterans, never mind all those other people as it is.

[Denzark]

I have a massive problem with a few of the comments on here. I will comment as follows, and then not again because some people clearly do not understand what the Poppy Appeal and Rememberance Day is all about.

1. Not one single jot of the 2 events above, glorifies war, encourages war, tries to tell youth 'Dulce et Decorum Est', etc. If you think your analysis of both does any of these things, regretably, you are simply as wrong as if your analysis of the problem: 2+2, came up with any answer other than 4.

2. Whilst I can find more examples than anyone, of occasions in which British, Empire or Colonial troops have acted illegally, immorally, in contravention to the rules and articles of law and Armed Conflict, or any combination thereof, by themselves or in small units, there are no examples of the UK Armed Forces corporately and as a whole, acting in that fashion in any theatre of war since the inception of Rememberance Day. Whilst I have no problem debating the apparent morality of any of oru wars with armchair generals using the benefit of hindsight, I am certain none of said conflicts have been illegal in international law.

3. 1 and 2 above have resonance in any argument as such, although we could say that if people died to preserve our freedoms including speech, debate should be allowed. But the key point is this: The OP was to commemorate Rememberance Day, and offer other posters the chance to leave their own respectful comments. To come onto a thread with that aim (ie respecting the dead) and use it to try and display your political or moral debates, is crass, rude, inappropriate and sheer damn bad manners. The freedom of speech could have been expressed in a different thread referencing this one, where people could have debated ad infinitum without detracting from the point of the OP.

4. I note that yesterday, GW got the entire Warhammer World Gaming room to have 2 minutes silence. 150 odd gamers at the Throne of Skulls tournament stood respectfully, you could have heard a pin drop. At the end there was a unanimous round of respectful and polite applause. Good Skills GW and all the gamers there.

[Wolfshade]

4. I note that yesterday, GW got the entire Warhammer World Gaming room to have 2 minutes silence. 150 odd gamers at the Throne of Skulls tournament stood respectfully, you could have heard a pin drop. At the end there was a unanimous round of respectful and polite applause. Good Skills GW and all the gamers there.


Similarly at the Autumn International between Scotland and New Zealand, there was a moments silence from the entire stadium.

The act of rememberance is two fold, firstly it is remembering those who gave the ultimate sacrifice and also remember the cost of war itself and that it should be avoided.

Up and down the country quarter peals and peals were rung out on half muffled bells in memory of those. Perhaps one of the most poingnat was from Coventry cathedral which was destroyed during the blitz, with only the tower surviving.

[Deadlift]

Well I started this thread simply to say "thank you" to those of you who have served or are serving in the armed forces here in the UK or from our allies in theatre. I had hoped that many would join me in doing the same but I should have guessed that someone as usual would try to make a debate out of my gratitude. Shame on those of you who tried to demean what the poppy represents.
It's all well and good sitting behind a keyboard or on a smartphone typing away your ideas of what a utopian world should be and how wonderful life would be without war etc etc, give me a break. This is the real world, anti war sentiment has its place. Spouting off about it on a thread that's giving thanks to the armed services now and in the past, isn't the place.
Now go stick a poppy on or make a donation to Help the Heroes or any chosen charity that supports our men and women who do what we can't or won't.

[Asymmetrical Xeno]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVAbyQtV7Rg

[Wolfshade]

VNV are most excellent.

[Uncle Nutsy]

I started wearing my poppy two day before remembrance day. I still have it here.

Now, I'm not going to bother quoting some of the comments here because frankly I found them to be ignorant and disrespectful.

But I will say this: it doesn't matter what your reasons are or what you perceive the reasons are. It doesn't matter if you think war is glorious or barbaric. The poppies are there to remember the ones who fought and gave their lives so you could post whatever comments you want on your computer, be them grand or vitriolic.

I may not have served, but I came real close. I also have had family that served. So I understand. And thank you Deadlift. Thank you.

[Tzeentch's Dark Agent]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_5V8We3hgg

Love the drumming here, I just think the song is kind of appropriate.

Thank you to all those servicemen and women, thank you for preserving my freedoms and also the freedoms of those that I care about.
I would have joined you if it wasn't for my asthma.