There were one or two on display outside the Tower of London in 2014.
But it looks so beautiful, particularly when you lay them out on the Cenotaph and the band plays Nimrod. It’s a sort of state religion, no?
I guess it depends on your perspective. It strikes me that the military in the US are treated as some kind of gods in the US consciousness.
It’s not the same in the UK. You don’t get special plaudits down the pub for being in the armed forces. Also, experiences of WW2 (and 1) were much closer to home - I can walk past practically any street on my commute from home to work and point out bomb sites in every one. The remembrance is heartfelt, it’s nowhere near about military glorification.
I don’t really think the US in general is into poppies for Armistice Day (we really aren’t into Armistice Day at all, calling it, as we do, “Veterans’ Day”).
I don’t believe I learned of the significance of poppies until I was in my thirties, reading British novels.
It’s overcompensation for how they got treated during the Vietnam War.
Maybe this is more appropriate:
Definitely not a glorification at Canadian services. That’s why it’s Remembrance Day: to remember the dead and the casualties. Solemn and melancholy sums it up.
Well, yes, the ceremony’s framed with Church of England prayers and hymns, and much the same at war memorials up and down the country.
I have it on good authority that most of the folks currently in boots are annoyed by being constantly thanked for the service where ever they go. They’re polite about accepting the thanks but mostly they are all, ‘enough already’.
Re: that poem with the line “they shall not grow old.” Reading the poem in full, and the backstory behind when and why that poem was written, I am left feeling that “they” should almost be grateful that they shall not “grow old.” Dulce et decorum est and all that nonsense.
Let’s just say that when I see it, when I read about it, and when I hear it, I get some… “complex feels.” I believe that these memorials do more to glorify war than to help the nation heal, particularly as WWI fades deeper into the past and the degree of shared loss among those now living is diminished from what it was when such ceremonies first began. I don’t believe it’s “meant” to glorify war, but I think it tends to in the same way that an ostensibly anti-war movie might become a favorite among willing volunteers. Because the action is exciting, and the message is lost in all the explosions and the heroism, however tragic it’s meant to be.
Which is perhaps why I am generally opposed to the idea of popularizing remembrance poppies in the US, or any other expansion of the previously noted near-deification of the military.
I’m just fine with the idea of barbecues and sales on Memorial/Veterans Day in the US. If it makes you feel sad/upset/angry that so many can just go on, fat/dumb/happy/whatever as the bodies of young men and women rot beneath the ground, then good. Let that feeling stew.