tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/remembrance-day-1845/articles
Remembrance Day – The Conversation
2023-11-10T16:34:34Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/217462
2023-11-10T16:34:34Z
2023-11-10T16:34:34Z
Palestine march: some opponents are politicising the Cenotaph to sow divisions – and it could work
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558828/original/file-20231110-15-auyr0r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Poppy wreaths placed around the Cenotaph on Whitehall.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/poppies-cenotaph-london-20472367">David Burrows|Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The pro-Palestine protest planned to take place in London on Armistice Day has <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/alex-chalk-armistice-palestine-protest-row-b2442956.html">met</a> with <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/united-kingdom-london-pro-palestine-rally-thats-dividing-britain/">opposition</a> from <a href="https://theconversation.com/suella-braverman-why-the-home-secretary-cant-force-the-police-to-cancel-a-pro-palestine-march-217399">politicians</a> and media pundits alike. </p>
<p>Organisers of the Armistice Day protest calling for a ceasefire in Gaza <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/06/organisers-of-pro-palestine-marches-fear-ban-on-saturdays-protest-in-london">have said</a> the march will not go near the Cenotaph on Whitehall. Opponents, meanwhile, have argued that it nonetheless poses a “threat” to the national war memorial.
The journalist Matt Ridley <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/any-protest-which-threatens-the-cenotaph-is-a-travesty/">has said</a> that “any protest which threatens the Cenotaph is a travesty”. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has echoed this sentiment, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-67305535">saying</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There is a clear and present risk that the Cenotaph and other war memorials could be desecrated, something that would be an affront to the British public and the values we stand for. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Cenotaph was first dedicated after the first world war and was later re-dedicated after the second world war. Each November, it is the focal point of official Armistice commemorations. </p>
<p>My <a href="https://brill.com/edcollbook/title/53180?language=en">research explores</a> how war memorials in Britain and elsewhere are visible - and sometimes contested - sites of political and civic ritual. They are valued specifically because they usher sacred sentiment into public discourse. And as a result, they can on occasion find themselves at the centre of highly public disputes.</p>
<h2>Sacred shrines of the secular age</h2>
<p>For some, fears of memorial desecration have already been borne out. On November 6 2023, “Free Palestine” graffiti was <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/rochdale-cenotaph-manchester-palestine-protest-b2443611.html">daubed</a> on the war memorial in Rochdale, Lancashire, and poppy wreaths damaged.</p>
<p>Similar fears have been voiced before. Back in 2016, the producers of the BBC’s Top Gear were <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-radio/top-gear-cenotaph-stunt-sparks-fury-as-show-bosses-defend-matt-le-blanc-scenes-a6929806.html">criticised in the press</a> when a video emerged of car stunts being filmed within sight of the Cenotaph. Former commander of British forces in Afghanistan Colonel Richard Kemp, <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/showbiz/tv-radio/652363/Top-Gear-bosses-slammed-war-veteran-filming-scenes-near-memorial-London-Matt-LeBlanc">reportedly characterised this</a> as “a shocking desecration of one of our most sacred sites”</p>
<p>Such comments show the deep and sometimes complicated relationship the British public has with monuments and memorials commemorating 20th-century war. For many people, these are the sacred national shrines of an increasingly secular age. </p>
<p>Dedicated to the dead, they are solemn sites of remembrance re-sanctified in ceremony and ritual each November 11. Many have their origins in the 1920s. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An archival photograph in colour London's Cenotaph war memorial on Whitehall." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558820/original/file-20231110-17-gecnu3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558820/original/file-20231110-17-gecnu3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558820/original/file-20231110-17-gecnu3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558820/original/file-20231110-17-gecnu3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558820/original/file-20231110-17-gecnu3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558820/original/file-20231110-17-gecnu3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558820/original/file-20231110-17-gecnu3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Cenotaph in 1961.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/cars-parked-on-side-of-the-road-near-building-during-daytime-ZfS2wDzfI6A">Annie Spratt|Unsplash</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, the Cenotaph was unveiled on November 11 1920 in a ceremony of national remembrance <a href="https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/the-cenotaph/history/">led by King George V</a>. The word comes from the Greek <em>kenotaphion</em>, which means “empty tomb”. It is as such that Lutyens conceived of his paired down monument, a symbolic form deliberately chosen as non-denominational.</p>
<p>It was first built as a temporary structure of wood and plaster for the Victory Parade of <a href="https://theconversation.com/remembrance-day-the-enduring-nature-of-the-first-two-minute-silence-126698">July 1919</a>. Around a million people made a pilgrimage to it in the week after the parade. </p>
<p>This outpouring of public grief was crucial to the establishment of a permanent Cenotaph, the following year, with the monument rebuilt in <a href="https://theconversation.com/portland-stone-how-a-creamy-british-limestone-became-a-symbol-of-empire-and-elitism-163763">Portland stone</a>. This fact is central to understanding the monument’s powerful place in modern British culture.</p>
<p>For many contemporaries, it was not simply an imposition from government but something which had been established as a result of collective and communal grief. In other words, it was the work of the people, not just of politicians. </p>
<p>Communal grief, albeit it on a smaller scale, was seen at many other locations across the country. In the towns and villages of Britain and its empire, <a href="https://www.ukwarmemorials.org/index.html">local communities</a> undertook the work of commemoration.</p>
<p>Historian Thomas Laqueur <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691029252/commemorations">has suggested</a> that these commemorative activities were part of the “democracy of death” because the war memorials of the 1920s carried the names of the <a href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/151162682.pdf">“common soldier”</a> – that is, ordinary people. </p>
<p>They were a feature of a new era of democratisation which saw new legislation introduced, including the <a href="https://ohrh.law.ox.ac.uk/the-representation-of-the-people-act-1918-a-democratic-milestone-in-the-uk-and-ireland/">Representation of the People Act</a> (1918), which extended the right to vote specifically to women over the age of 30 who met a property qualification and to all men over the age of 21. </p>
<p>As such, these structures have come to play an important role in the civic life of many communities. </p>
<p>Any thing perceived as in some way encroaching upon them thus risks becoming seen as a “threat”. This might be an activity (car stunts) that causes noise and disturbance nearby. Or it might be an event (such as a protest) that has the potential to disrupt a time-honoured ritual. </p>
<p>The route of the planned pro-Palestine march will not take protestors anywhere near the Cenotaph. And yet, despite the Western Front Association, which organises Armistice Day commemorations, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/nov/08/organiser-of-armistice-day-event-at-cenotaph-hopes-pro-palestine-protest-can-go-ahead">saying</a> the march should be allowed to go ahead, it clearly remains an emotive issue for many. </p>
<p>This public sentiment is precisely why politicians invoke the Cenotaph – those wishing to <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/braverman-palestine-protest-armistice-far-right-b2444454.html">stoke divisions</a> know it will be a successful gambit. Ultimately, the ongoing debate over the protest shows that even the nation’s war memorials can become drawn into the increasingly fractious politics of post-Brexit Britain.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217462/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sam Edwards has previously received funding from the ESRC, the US-UK Fulbright Commission, the US Army Military History Institute, and the US Naval War College. Sam is a Trustee of Sulgrave Manor (Northamptonshire) and The American Library (Norwich). </span></em></p>
Politicians wishing to stoke divisions invoke the Cenotaph knowing it will be a successful gambit because so many find solace in its meaning.
Sam Edwards, Reader in Modern Political History, Loughborough University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/193849
2022-11-10T21:28:09Z
2022-11-10T21:28:09Z
Remembrance Day: Trudeau’s apology to Black servicemen needs to be followed with action
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494751/original/file-20221110-3879-1m8750.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=60%2C78%2C5738%2C3782&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Soldiers salute during the national apology to the No. 2 Construction Battalion in Truro, N.S. on July 9, 2022. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Riley Smith</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>While it’s true that actions do speak louder than words, words do matter — especially when they’re spoken with honesty and sincerity and are the precursor to meaningful action. </p>
<p>This was the prevailing sentiment within Black communities in Canada following <a href="https://pm.gc.ca/en/news/news-releases/2022/07/09/prime-minister-delivers-apology-descendants-no-2-construction">Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s apology in July 2022</a> to the descendants of the Black men who served with the <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/no-2-construction-battalion">No. 2 Construction Battalion</a> during the First World War. </p>
<p>The No. 2 Battalion sailed for Europe from Halifax in March 1917. The No. 2 totalled 614 men, far fewer than the roughly 1,000 that usually make up a battalion. </p>
<p>It was the only battalion-sized segregated unit in the <a href="https://www.warmuseum.ca/firstworldwar/history/life-at-the-front/military-structure/the-canadian-expeditionary-force/">Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF)</a> and it existed because commanding officers routinely and callously rejected Black men who wanted to fight for the country. </p>
<p>As letters, memos and other military records archived from the war years indicate, commanding officers and white recruits felt that the conflict was a <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/6147380/black-canadians-soldiers-world-war-racism/">white man’s war</a>. Anti-Black racism also led many to believe that Black men were not fighting material. </p>
<p>In one instance, a major-general who served as Canada’s Chief of the General Staff confidently declared that in the trenches “the civilized negro” was “not likely to make a good fighter.” </p>
<p>Those attitudes prevailed even after surviving members of the battalion returned to Canada. Historical records reveal that the men did not even receive the public expressions of thanks extended to other returnees. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494748/original/file-20221110-14-1mf3u3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An elderly man in military uniform holds a black and white photo of a younger man also in uniform" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494748/original/file-20221110-14-1mf3u3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494748/original/file-20221110-14-1mf3u3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494748/original/file-20221110-14-1mf3u3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494748/original/file-20221110-14-1mf3u3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494748/original/file-20221110-14-1mf3u3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494748/original/file-20221110-14-1mf3u3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494748/original/file-20221110-14-1mf3u3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Peter Richards holds a picture of battalion member Percy James Richards during the national apology to the No. 2 Construction Battalion in Truro, N.S. on July 9, 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Riley Smith</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A first step</h2>
<p>Although there are those who have criticized Trudeau for <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-national-apology-advisory-committee-canada-justin-trudeau-armed-forces-systemic-racism-discrimination-11657656307">“weaken[ing]the currency of national apologies by issuing so many,”</a> many Black Canadians were glad that he gave it. </p>
<p>His apology did not shy away from naming racism and anti-Black hate as the reason for the horrific treatment of the No. 2 men. It acknowledged that racism and anti-Black hate are still a problem <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/8784238/canadian-forces-systemic-racism-repulsing-new-recruits/">in the Canadian military and elsewhere</a>. </p>
<p>The apology directly linked the anti-Black racism experienced by the men of the No. 2 Construction Battalion to the widespread systemic racism in the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) today. <a href="https://pm.gc.ca/en/news/speeches/2022/07/09/prime-ministers-remarks-apologize-descendants-no-2-construction-battalion">Trudeau committed his government and the military to effecting</a> “meaningful change, where the dignity of all service members in the Canadian Armed Forces is upheld. Where everyone is welcome; where everyone can rise through the ranks; where everyone has opportunities to distinguish themselves.” </p>
<p>Exactly how these outcomes will be achieved remains to be seen. In 2016, <a href="https://www.stewartmckelvey.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/StatementofClaim_as_issued_ForcesClassAction.pdf">a class-action claim</a> filed on behalf of Black and other racialized personnel detailed the trauma and career consequences many have experienced due to unchecked racism in the CAF, including being silenced when they step forward with complaints and having their careers cut short. </p>
<p>At the apology ceremony, <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/news/2022/07/apology-by-minister-of-national-defence-anita-anand-to-the-descendants-of-no-2-construction-battalion.html">Defence Minister Anita Anand said</a> she’s “committed to eliminating systemic racism so that the discrimination faced by the Number 2 Construction Battalion and those who followed never happens again.” She added that the Department of Defense must “begin working on [the National Apology Advisory Committee’s] recommendations now.” </p>
<p>“Now” is the operative word, and meaningful change will depend on the government and Armed Forces following through with that promise.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494750/original/file-20221110-16-5jyhv4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A white man in a dark suit shakes hands with an elderly black man wearing a shirt and tie and military cap." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494750/original/file-20221110-16-5jyhv4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494750/original/file-20221110-16-5jyhv4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494750/original/file-20221110-16-5jyhv4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494750/original/file-20221110-16-5jyhv4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494750/original/file-20221110-16-5jyhv4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494750/original/file-20221110-16-5jyhv4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494750/original/file-20221110-16-5jyhv4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks with a descendant during the national apology to the No. 2 Construction Battalion in Truro, N.S. on July 9, 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Riley Smith</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A path forward</h2>
<p>Of course, the fact that the apology was made in 2022 is an indication that federal apologies like this one are not all about altruism and moral conscience but are in large part the result of pressure (sometimes decades-long) from communities.</p>
<p>So the point is not lost on some observers that the intent to apologize, <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/news/2021/03/government-of-canada-planning-apology-to-the-no-2-construction-battalion.html">announced on March 28, 2021</a>, came in the aftermath of the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/article/george-floyd-protests-timeline.html">police killing of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests that followed</a>.</p>
<p>Despite sneers against critical race theory from certain political factions and the constant drumbeat against political correctness and <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ron-desantis-florida-where-woke-goes-to-die-midterm-election-win/">being “woke,”</a> there has been a noticeable shift toward a better understanding of anti-Black racism and the various insidious and overt forms that it takes. </p>
<p>This is our zeitgeist. There’s a sense within Black communities that Black people’s moment, though it’s not here quite yet, is closer on the horizon and the prime minister’s apology has aligned with the times.</p>
<p>But things cannot start and end with the apology. If the prime minister and his government are truly committed to meaningful change, then Black communities need to see words followed up by action. </p>
<p>The government and military need to respond seriously to the <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/army/services/events/2-construction-battalion/apology-advisory.html#recommendations">key recommendations</a> put forward by the National Apology Advisory Committee that require post-apology action. They must also work with Black communities and the CAF to implement initiatives that bring about the changes that Black people themselves would like to see. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494762/original/file-20221110-13-ju3g6k.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A series of small green flags with an emblem, names and No.2 Construction Battalion written on them." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494762/original/file-20221110-13-ju3g6k.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494762/original/file-20221110-13-ju3g6k.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494762/original/file-20221110-13-ju3g6k.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494762/original/file-20221110-13-ju3g6k.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494762/original/file-20221110-13-ju3g6k.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494762/original/file-20221110-13-ju3g6k.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494762/original/file-20221110-13-ju3g6k.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Flags on display at the national apology to the No. 2 Construction Battalion.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Riley Smith</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At the July apology ceremony, it was announced that the venue in Truro, N.S., where the event took place — and where the No. 2 performed training exercises — <a href="https://www.saltwire.com/atlantic-canada/news/we-are-sorry-trudeau-delivers-apology-in-truro-to-no-2-construction-battalion-and-descendants-100751798/">would be renamed in honour of the battalion</a>. </p>
<p>But post-apology actions need to go beyond simply honoring and commemorating. They need to be <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/reparations-no-2-battalion-federal-apology-1.6512240">truly reparative</a>.</p>
<p>Justice Minister David Lametti recently announced that the government will <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/department-justice/news/2022/11/minister-lametti-to-make-a-funding-announcement0.html">provide funding</a> for a <a href="https://www.blacklegalactioncentre.ca/">Black Legal Action Centre</a> project that “addresses the over-representation of individuals from Black communities in the criminal justice system in Toronto.” </p>
<p>A day earlier, the Toronto International Film Festival announced its decision to <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/tiff-rename-cinema-viola-desmond-1.6644256">rename its largest cinema after civil rights activist Viola Desmond</a> and also pledged to <a href="https://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/toronto-international-film-festival-renames-cinema-for-activist-viola-desmond-1.6145404">“raise $2 million over the next five years to provide support to Black women creators [and] develop programming for Black audiences.”</a> </p>
<p>Both provide good reparative models. They aim to simultaneously educate and redress. Whether post-apology actions are targeted exclusively at the descendants of the No. 2 Battalion and Black men who served in the First World War or all personnel who have experienced racism, their effectiveness should be measured by how well they correct misleading narratives about Black military service in Canada.</p>
<p>They should also examine how well the related funding and initiatives ameliorate the anti-Black racism experienced by target groups.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/193849/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hyacinth Simpson has received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. </span></em></p>
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s apology to Black soldiers who served in the First World War was a good first step, but real action is needed to address racism in the Canadian Armed Forces.
Hyacinth Simpson, Associate Professor, Department of English and Dimensions Faculty Chair, Faculty of Arts, Toronto Metropolitan University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/167764
2021-11-05T21:06:50Z
2021-11-05T21:06:50Z
Remembrance Day: Flag-raising discussions in Canada pose questions about residential schools and what we remember
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430371/original/file-20211104-19417-y4via4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C24%2C1510%2C1115&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Canadian flag has been at half-mast on government buildings since the end of May, after unmarked graves were identified at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld </span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 175px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/remembrance-day--flag-raising-discussions-in-canada-pose-questions-about-residential-schools-and-what-we-remember" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>As Remembrance Day approaches there have been concerns about <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-discussions-under-way-with-indigenous-communities-about-how-to-lower">honouring veterans at the same time as respecting the Indigenous children who died in residential schools</a>.</p>
<p>The Assembly of First Nations has called for Canadian flags to be raised before Remembrance Day to <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2021/11/05/assembly-of-first-nations-calls-for-canadian-flags-to-be-raised-ahead-of-remembrance-day-and-for-every-child-matters-banners-to-be-added.html">enable a ceremonial lowering on Indigenous Veterans Day and Remembrance Day</a>. It has also requested that an orange “Every Child Matters” flag be attached to the Peace Tower and federal buildings.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadian-flags-to-remain-at-half-mast-residential-schools-1.6170504">Canadian flag has been at half-mast</a> on government buildings <a href="https://windsor.ctvnews.ca/flags-lowered-to-half-mast-in-memory-of-215-residential-school-children-1.5449473">since the end of May</a>, following the finding of unmarked graves at the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia. In the lead-up to Nov. 11, it has been unclear when the federal government would raise the Canadian flag.</p>
<p>Remembrance Day and the traumas experienced through residential schools are topics that demand thoughtful engagement — especially when explored in schools. Now is a good time to consider what is worthwhile observing and remembering. </p>
<h2>‘Price of freedom’</h2>
<p>Remembrance Day offers an opportunity to observe those who served and died for the nation-state of Canada. Veterans Affairs Canada says <a href="https://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/remembrance">Remembrance Day is about helping Canadians “understand the price of freedom.”</a></p>
<p>Commemorating the costs <a href="https://www.nostoneleftalone.ca/why-we-celebrate-remembrance-day">of military conflict</a> is central to the ethos of this day. But this year, the lead-up to this observance feels different.</p>
<p>This difference may be because Indigenous peoples’ traumas are becoming better understood by educators and the general public. </p>
<p>Researchers in education, social sciences and the arts have <a href="https://scholar.google.ca/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=xPhxCe4AAAAJ&citation_for_view=xPhxCe4AAAAJ:d1gkVwhDpl0C">asked critical questions</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/2048-416X.2014.12001.x">about the inclusion of Remembrance Day ceremonies in schools</a>: What exactly are we remembering or honouring? What kind of freedom <a href="https://doi.org/10.29173/cons9578">has been available to whom within the borders of our own nation state</a>? Do we know what <a href="https://theconversation.com/first-world-war-poet-wilfred-owen-treated-for-shell-shock-carried-readers-into-the-horror-of-war-148060">those soldiers would have liked us to remember</a>?</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Indigenous veterans stand with placards protesting." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430274/original/file-20211104-11504-1327338.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C38%2C1997%2C1263&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430274/original/file-20211104-11504-1327338.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430274/original/file-20211104-11504-1327338.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430274/original/file-20211104-11504-1327338.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430274/original/file-20211104-11504-1327338.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=625&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430274/original/file-20211104-11504-1327338.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=625&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430274/original/file-20211104-11504-1327338.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=625&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Indigenous veterans of the Second World War, Howard Anderson (right), Philip Favel (centre) and Henry Beaudry protest to save their veteran’s benefits in Ottawa, in September 2002.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Growing recognition of Indigenous veterans</h2>
<p>There has been growing recognition of <a href="https://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/remembrance/those-who-served/indigenous-veterans/native-soldiers">the important role Indigenous soldiers played serving overseas</a>. <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/corporate/news/regional-news/western-sentinel/2021/11/nov-8-marks-national-aboriginal-veterans-day.html">National Aboriginal Veterans Day</a>, (now known as <a href="https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1605286948270/1605287188462">Indigenous Veterans Day</a>), <a href="https://activehistory.ca/2018/03/indigenous-veterans-the-indian-act-and-the-origins-of-national-aboriginal-day/">was established on Nov. 8, 1993</a>. In 2001, <a href="https://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/remembrance/memorials/canada/national-aboriginal-veterans-monument">the National Aboriginal Veterans Monument</a> was unveiled in Ottawa.</p>
<p>These Indigenous soldiers served in defence of a nation-state that was built on their own territories, fighting in other regions of the world from which some of their comrades hailed. Occasionally, this service was in defence of the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/treaty-of-versailles-1">treaties abroad</a>, while the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2020/3/17/canada-and-the-first-nations-a-history-of-broken-promises">treaties back home</a> were being violated by colonial governments.</p>
<p>The contributions of Indigenous military personnel has been an important but relatively unrecognized aspect of Canada’s military history. This extends <a href="https://davidgibbins.com/journal/2013/11/10/pharaoh-a-canadian-mohawk-on-the-nile">from the Kanienkeha’ka men who joined</a> <a href="https://www.dundurn.com/books_/t22117/a9781550028676-mohawks-on-the-nile">British forces in Egypt</a> in the late 19th century (and earlier, <a href="https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1338906261900/1607905474266">prior to confederation</a>) to the <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/indigenous-peoples-and-the-second-world-war"><em>Onkwehón:we</em> who were conscripted for home and overseas service in the 1940s</a> (<em>Onkwehon:we</em> is a Kanienke’ha word for “First Peoples”). </p>
<p>Many Indigenous veterans received horrible treatment upon their return to Canada and <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/indigenous-suffrage">weren’t even allowed to vote until 1960</a>.</p>
<p>In recent years, new <a href="https://www.oise.utoronto.ca/deepeningknowledge/UserFiles/File/Teacher_sGuide.pdf">school curriculum has introduced information about Indigenous veterans</a> and there have been Indigenous veteran tributes.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/sE9W5tdQ230?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Canadian Armed Forces video on Indigenous veterans (2020).</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Examinations of our pasts</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.ubcpress.ca/memory">Critical examinations of our past</a> may help develop a richer and more expansive understanding of ourselves and our past, and who and what we are as a nation. </p>
<p>Essential to such critical examinations is the re-examining of <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-94-6091-512-3">how we talk about Remembrance Day</a>. An example of such re-examining in schools can include historical points such as the notion that even as soldiers were fighting in the name of freedom on other continents, often in the defence of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Treaty-of-London">British treaty obligations</a>, Indigenous children on this continent were being buried at residential schools. </p>
<p>There can be political benefits to equipping students to think about complex issues. Schools can be key sites for the development of <a href="https://utorontopress.com/9781442611078/consuming-schools/">engaged citizens</a> who are capable of discussing and reflecting on <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2017.11.020">sensitive social and political issues</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/commemoration-controversies-in-classrooms-canadian-history-teachers-disagree-about-making-ethical-judgments-163053">Commemoration controversies in classrooms: Canadian history teachers disagree about making ethical judgments</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Grappling with genocide in Canada</h2>
<p>With efforts underway at the sites of former Indian Residential Schools to detect unmarked graves, many are concerned with a remembrance of a different sort — a remembrance that can somehow acknowledge <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-canada-committed-genocide-against-indigenous-peoples-explained-by-the-lawyer-central-to-the-determination-162582">genocide in Canada</a>.</p>
<p>An integral part of building Canada as a nation was eradicating Indigenous Peoples. The purpose of the Indian Residential School system was to establish colonial sovereignty in the Dominion of Canada through the <a href="https://theconversation.com/reconciliation-and-residential-schools-canadians-need-new-stories-to-face-a-future-better-than-what-we-inherited-108305">removal of Indigenous Peoples</a>. </p>
<p>With a focus on one of the most vulnerable portions of any population — young children — the Indian Residential School system created a means for <a href="https://www.facinghistory.org/stolen-lives-indigenous-peoples-canada-and-indian-residential-schools/chapter-3/killing-indian-child">the nation-state to “get rid of the Indian problem.”</a> In time, many students of such institutions would lose their language and culture, and <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57325653">thousands of children lost their lives</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A large bronze statue showing three united figures is seen in front of a background of Canadian flag at half mast and a construction crane." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430364/original/file-20211104-22514-d4o4o4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=918%2C71%2C2008%2C1816&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430364/original/file-20211104-22514-d4o4o4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430364/original/file-20211104-22514-d4o4o4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430364/original/file-20211104-22514-d4o4o4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430364/original/file-20211104-22514-d4o4o4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430364/original/file-20211104-22514-d4o4o4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430364/original/file-20211104-22514-d4o4o4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The flag flies at half-mast on the Peace Tower, seen behind the ‘Three Watchmen’ statue, created by hereditary chief of the Staast'as Eagle Clan James Hart, on June 2, 2021, the second anniversary of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women report.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Dismantling current understandings</h2>
<p>One might argue that we should continue keeping observances about colonization in Canada and residential schools separate from memorializations about wars fought overseas. </p>
<p>However, the separation of these and exclusion of wars fought on this continent emerges from particular historical decisions and ensuing narratives.</p>
<p>A key and complex example of this is how Canada and other colonial nations participated in shaping the definition of genocide following the Second World War.
Andrew Woolford, a genocide scholar, notes that Canada <a href="https://theconversation.com/canadas-mmiwg-report-spurs-debate-on-the-shifting-definitions-of-genocide-118324">“voted against inclusion of cultural genocide (Article III) in the genocide convention.”</a> One consequence of this was directing Canadians’ attention away from the effects of colonial conflict and systemic violence on this continent to our heroism elsewhere. </p>
<h2>Honest conversations</h2>
<p>Keeping the Remembrance Day focus on what happened overseas may encourage people to avoid the violence that occurred back home or to maintain a belief that the only conflicts Canada has been involved have been abroad.</p>
<p>Addressing this requires honest conversations in schools about these issues. As is sometimes said, there is <a href="https://www.macleans.ca/opinion/reconciliation-cant-happen-without-truth-so-why-do-some-suppress-it/">no reconciliation without truth</a>.</p>
<p>Educators may consider this journey of <a href="https://journals.sfu.ca/cje/index.php/cje-rce/article/view/1283">expanding their perspectives</a> to be difficult. But dismantling how Canadians understand what’s worth remembering is important work. Educators must <a href="https://theconversation.com/reckoning-with-the-truths-of-unmarked-graves-of-indigenous-children-education-systems-must-take-action-166151">continue to find ways to engage students in these difficult conversations</a>.</p>
<p><em>If you are an Indian Residential School survivor, or have been affected by the residential school system and need help, you can contact the 24-hour Indian Residential Schools Crisis Line: 1-866-925-4419</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/167764/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Trevor Norris receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Frank Deer receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and Canada Research Chairs.</span></em></p>
Remembrance Day has typically focused on commemorating the costs of military conflict. It is time to reconsider what and we remember and how.
Trevor Norris, Associate Professor, Department of Eductional Studies, Brock University
Frank Deer, Associate professor and Canada Research Chair, Faculty of Education, University of Manitoba
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/148890
2020-11-08T13:55:52Z
2020-11-08T13:55:52Z
Remembrance Day: How a Canadian painter broke boundaries on the First World War battlefields
<p>“I cannot talk, I can only paint.” </p>
<p>This is how Canadian battlefield painter Mary Riter Hamilton (1867-1954) summarized her urgent response to witnessing the large-scale destruction of the First World War. </p>
<p>The 51-year-old artist began painting the devastated regions of Northern France and Flanders in late April 1919 and continued until November 1921. During this period, she often rushed from one battlefield to the next to paint the scenes in oil before the war detritus was cleared or the dead were buried.</p>
<p>Hamilton first sought work with <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/war-artists">the Canadian War Memorials Fund</a> in 1917, and again in 1918 as an official artist, but was rejected because she was a woman. After this, she embraced alternate means to gain permission and financial support for her expedition. </p>
<p>Fuelling her unprecedented expedition through the trenches of the Vimy Ridge, the Somme and the ruins of Ypres was her patriotic desire to create a memorial in paintings for her country. </p>
<p>My forthcoming book, <a href="https://www.mqup.ca/i-can-only-paint-products-9780228003915.php"><em>I Can Only Paint: The Story of Battlefield Painter Mary Riter Hamilton</em></a>, features her letters and the first exhaustive account of her vast, under-explored oeuvre and her powerful visual rhetoric as a battlefield artist. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Battlefields in gray and brown with smoke rising." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366786/original/file-20201030-17-ei1ctl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366786/original/file-20201030-17-ei1ctl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366786/original/file-20201030-17-ei1ctl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366786/original/file-20201030-17-ei1ctl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366786/original/file-20201030-17-ei1ctl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366786/original/file-20201030-17-ei1ctl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366786/original/file-20201030-17-ei1ctl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Clearing the Battlefields in Flanders,’ by Mary Riter Hamilton, 1921, oil on cardboard, 26.3 × 35.0 cm.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-142, Copy negative c-104244)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Painter and witness</h2>
<p>As a witness of mass graves and human remains, Hamilton responded with a painting style that made viewers see and feel her deeply felt and ultimately traumatic encounters, rendered in vivid colours, spontaneous brushstrokes and tumultuous landscapes. </p>
<p>Hamilton transgressed the rules of both gender and art in her day. Hamilton first embraced her artistic vocation after her husband’s sudden death when she was 26. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368015/original/file-20201106-15-16e270e.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Portrait of a woman in fur stole" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368015/original/file-20201106-15-16e270e.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368015/original/file-20201106-15-16e270e.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368015/original/file-20201106-15-16e270e.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368015/original/file-20201106-15-16e270e.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368015/original/file-20201106-15-16e270e.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=944&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368015/original/file-20201106-15-16e270e.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=944&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368015/original/file-20201106-15-16e270e.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=944&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mary Riter Hamilton in fur stole, in a rare photograph, c. early 1920s. Location unknown.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Ronald T. Riter Collection)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In early 1919, she was commissioned by the war amputees club of British Columbia, who paid for Hamilton’s trip overseas, and likely for two shipments of her paintings back to Vancouver. The club reproduced her paintings in colour in their magazine but discontinued their support after one year. Hamilton continued while using up her personal resources and relying on sporadic support from a female patron in Victoria, B.C.</p>
<p>When Hamilton left Canada, she was at the height of a brilliant career, at that time much more recognized than <a href="https://www.gallery.ca/collection/artist/emily-carr">painter Emily Carr</a>.</p>
<h2>Non-official scenes</h2>
<p>Artists with the Canadian War Memorial Fund made brief sketching trips to battlefields and then prepared polished and monumental paintings in their London and Paris studios. As art historian Laura Brandon has shown, artists such as Arthur Lismer and Frederick Varley used <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/43202465">photographs, which they combined with their own experience to compose war paintings as amalgamated scenes</a>. The most famous of these Canadian War Memorial-commissioned paintings, <a href="https://www.warmuseum.ca/collections/artifact/1017198/">Richard Jack’s <em>The Second Battle of Ypres</em></a>, reconstructed dramatic combat by using unrealistic 19th-century war art conventions, although the artist had visited the battlefield after the fight.</p>
<p>Hamilton, by contrast, transgressed official war painting norms to pioneer her own visceral style that blurred boundaries between documentary realism and esthetic urgency. Many of her works exhibit a haunting blankness, recalling the missing soldiers. She also painted individual soldiers’ marked graves, as well as mass graves where entire regiments had perished. In so doing, she insisted on remembering and mourning each individual loss. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two crosses in front of dugouts and scorched trees." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366779/original/file-20201030-19-1jxoex7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366779/original/file-20201030-19-1jxoex7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366779/original/file-20201030-19-1jxoex7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366779/original/file-20201030-19-1jxoex7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366779/original/file-20201030-19-1jxoex7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=579&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366779/original/file-20201030-19-1jxoex7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=579&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366779/original/file-20201030-19-1jxoex7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=579&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Gun Emplacements, Farbus Wood, Vimy Ridge,’ by Mary Riter Hamilton, 1919, oil on woven paper.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-147, Copy negative C-101321)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>She painted on small canvases or pieces of plywood or paper while trekking through collapsing trenches and swamps en route to remote areas. Her work can be seen as a part of what political theorist Michal Givoni has identified as a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276413488633">20th-century shift towards mobilizing acts of witnessing as a vocation by showing difficult truths in public</a>. </p>
<p>Among the handful <a href="http://www.reaktionbooks.co.uk/display.asp?ISB=9781780233741">of women who painted the First World War</a>, Hamilton stands out for the magnitude of her work, the length of her stay in the battlefields and her empathic esthetic achievements. </p>
<p>Today, we have witnessed disturbing images of mass graves during the COVID-19 pandemic in the same time that our society is reckoning with what it means to make ethical choices as we confront connections between systemic inequities, violence and historical trauma. How we think about and understand Hamilton’s courageous, determined and perilous engagement of mass death is more important than ever. </p>
<h2>Startling perspective</h2>
<p>In <em>Memorial for the Second Canadian Division in a Mine Crater Near Neuville St. Vaast</em> (circa 1920) Hamilton visualizes the shocking decimation of an entire regiment with an alarmingly deep hole, whose cutaway view gives viewers a startling, open perspective. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366782/original/file-20201030-23-popdq0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Steps going into a deep crater gray and on tall crosses perched above." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366782/original/file-20201030-23-popdq0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366782/original/file-20201030-23-popdq0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366782/original/file-20201030-23-popdq0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366782/original/file-20201030-23-popdq0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366782/original/file-20201030-23-popdq0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=625&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366782/original/file-20201030-23-popdq0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=625&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366782/original/file-20201030-23-popdq0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=625&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Memorial for the Second Canadian Division in a Mine Crater near Neuville St. Vaast,’ by Mary Riter Hamilton, circa 1920, oil on canvas.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-69, Copy negative C-105221)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Also concerned with survivors, she recorded scenes of reconstruction, as in <em>Cloth Hall, Ypres – Market Day</em> (1920). This showed grieving family members at a distance and depicted signs of hope and new life. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366783/original/file-20201030-23-9wrhtw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A market crowd in front of a church." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366783/original/file-20201030-23-9wrhtw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366783/original/file-20201030-23-9wrhtw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366783/original/file-20201030-23-9wrhtw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366783/original/file-20201030-23-9wrhtw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366783/original/file-20201030-23-9wrhtw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366783/original/file-20201030-23-9wrhtw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366783/original/file-20201030-23-9wrhtw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Cloth Hall, Ypres – Market Day,’ by Mary Riter Hamilton, 1920, oil on wove paper.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-162, Copy negative C-104371)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On her expedition, Hamilton overnighted in <a href="https://www.1418now.org.uk/commissions/shelter-2/ww1-heritage-shelter/">war-torn Nissen huts</a> erected for military shelter and storage or other makeshift shelters. By 1920, her war studios included a bombed-out attic in Arras, France. She often ground her colours on the battlefield. She lived in extreme poverty, often starving and putting her life in danger. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Scores of crosses seen across scorched land." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366795/original/file-20201030-23-td68ys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366795/original/file-20201030-23-td68ys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366795/original/file-20201030-23-td68ys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366795/original/file-20201030-23-td68ys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366795/original/file-20201030-23-td68ys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366795/original/file-20201030-23-td68ys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366795/original/file-20201030-23-td68ys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Battlefields from Vimy Ridge, Lens-Arras Road,’ by Mary Riter Hamilton, 1919, oil on plywood.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-75, Copy negative C-104794)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Recognizing her work</h2>
<p>Art historians <a href="https://www.timescolonist.com/robert-amos-sleuthing-paints-picture-of-artists-1.1703876">Robert Amos</a> and <a href="https://www.amazon.ca/Independent-Spirit-Early-Canadian-Artists/dp/1554074177">Ash Prakash</a> have begun to document Hamilton’s important pre-war contributions to Canadian impressionism. </p>
<p>Beginning in 1989, historian Angela Davis, with art historian Sarah McKinnon, <a href="http://www.umanitoba.ca/cm/vol2/no4/hamilton.html">curated exhibitions</a> of Hamilton’s battlefield work, and scholars have begun <a href="https://uofmpress.ca/books/detail/no-mans-land">to honour her legacy</a>. In recent years, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCM8y1mYyt8">The War Amps produced a video</a> about Hamilton. </p>
<p>For Remembrance Day this year, <a href="https://www.canadapost.ca/blogs/personal/perspectives/stamp-honours-mary-riter-hamilton/">Canada Post has dedicated a stamp to Hamilton’s memory</a>, featuring her 1919 painting <em>Trenches on the Somme</em> in which scarlet poppies grow along white chalk walls of the trench. The painting exhibits her trademark style, which often puts the viewer inside a trench. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Poppies growing on the walls of a trench." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366784/original/file-20201030-17-1c9v6fw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366784/original/file-20201030-17-1c9v6fw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366784/original/file-20201030-17-1c9v6fw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366784/original/file-20201030-17-1c9v6fw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366784/original/file-20201030-17-1c9v6fw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=622&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366784/original/file-20201030-17-1c9v6fw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=622&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366784/original/file-20201030-17-1c9v6fw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=622&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Trenches on the Somme,’ by Mary Riter Hamilton, 1919, oil on commercial board.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-38, Copy negative C-104747)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Hamilton brought home more than 320 battlefield works painted in oil, or drawn in pencil, charcoal or pastel, along with etchings. She donated 227 to the Dominion Archives (today <a href="https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/CollectionSearch/Pages/record.aspx?app=fonandcol&IdNumber=181825">Library and Archives Canada</a>). </p>
<p>In 1922, Hamilton was <a href="https://prd11.wsl.canadapost.ca/web/en/blogs/collecting/details.page?article=2020/10/22/mary_riter_hamilton&cattype=collecting&cat=stamps">awarded one of France’s highest honours, the Ordre des Palmes académiques</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man in a car." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368030/original/file-20201106-21-1pdpis5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368030/original/file-20201106-21-1pdpis5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=818&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368030/original/file-20201106-21-1pdpis5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=818&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368030/original/file-20201106-21-1pdpis5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=818&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368030/original/file-20201106-21-1pdpis5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1028&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368030/original/file-20201106-21-1pdpis5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1028&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368030/original/file-20201106-21-1pdpis5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1028&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mary Riter Hamilton with driver near the ruin of Ablain St. Nazaire at the foot of the Vimy Ridge in 1919.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Ronald T. Riter Collection)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Life and legacy</h2>
<p>Hamilton’s life and legacy leaves us much to reflect on today. As an artist who embraced witnessing as a vocation, she broke barriers and insisted upon artistically rendering what she saw with candour. Her perception and embodied art practice also left a unique record of the physical and moral devastation of war, both in her art and in her own life.</p>
<p>As a woman artist travelling through battlefields, she experienced mobility, articulated a vision of empathy and contributed to a public record of the war. Yet how she engaged with her craft and what she saw took a toll on her health and ultimately curtailed her career as a painter. She suffered from post-traumatic stress and a major mental breakdown and other health problems following her expedition. War painting would mark her for life.</p>
<p>Hamilton summed up her achievement with understatement: “Yes, it was like living in a graveyard … but I felt this was a duty that someone must do, and I thought I would try to do it.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/148890/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Irene Gammel receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).</span></em></p>
After Canadian painter Mary Riter Hamilton was rejected for service as a war artist because she was a woman, she trekked battlefields to create more than 320 works that recall the missing soldiers.
Irene Gammel, Professor & Director, MLC Research Centre and Gallery, Toronto Metropolitan University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/148060
2020-11-05T18:27:45Z
2020-11-05T18:27:45Z
First World War poet Wilfred Owen, treated for shell shock, carried readers into the horror of war
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367346/original/file-20201103-23-tvf98o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C19%2C1000%2C676&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Dispatch rider with pigeons leaving for firing line, His Majesty's Pigeon Service, November 1917, location unknown.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/">(William Rider-Rider. Canada. Department of National Defence. Library and Archives Canada, PA-002034)</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Remembrance Day commemorates the end of the First World War on Nov. 11, 1918, and the poppy is the abiding symbol of Remembrance Day <a href="https://www.britishlegion.org.uk/get-involved/remembrance/about-remembrance/the-poppy">in Great Britain and the Commonwealth countries</a>, including Canada. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Wilfred Owen" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366772/original/file-20201030-21-1g57u3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366772/original/file-20201030-21-1g57u3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=837&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366772/original/file-20201030-21-1g57u3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=837&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366772/original/file-20201030-21-1g57u3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=837&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366772/original/file-20201030-21-1g57u3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1052&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366772/original/file-20201030-21-1g57u3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1052&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366772/original/file-20201030-21-1g57u3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1052&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Wilfred Owen, photograph published in a 1920 anthology of his poems.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Wikimedia Commons)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The poppy <a href="https://www.legion.ca/remembrance/the-poppy/history-of-the-poppy">has been associated with war remembrance in a variety of ways</a>. But
as many who attended elementary school in Canada may remember, the poppy’s iconic popularity is often attributed to the poem by Canadian physician and poet, John McCrae, “<a href="https://www.warmuseum.ca/cwm/exhibitions/remember/flandersfields_e.html">In Flanders Fields</a>.”</p>
<p>I would like to submit for consideration a different poem as a more suitable and ultimately more resonant poem to guide our reflections this Remembrance Day: Wilfred Owen’s “<a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46560/dulce-et-decorum-est">Dulce et Decorum Est</a>.” </p>
<h2>‘In Flanders Fields’</h2>
<p>“In Flanders Fields” begins with a haunting evocation of poppies growing between marked graves of the war dead <a href="https://www.inflandersfields.be/en">in Belgium</a>, a description delivered by those very dead. In Canada <a href="https://www.britishlegion.org.uk/get-involved/remembrance/about-remembrance/in-flanders-field/?seg=WANWEB003&gclid=CjwKCAiA4o79BRBvEiwAjteoYKTqbKkxl6OCJE-XU_96F3qnD_9V4Q9ma0AmyZFiRAXMCLUFmtNKGBoCyuQQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds">and beyond</a>, the poem has become a mainstream literary representation of all the wars and casualties remembered on Remembrance Day.</p>
<p>I have always found McCrae’s poem unsuitable to commemorate the war or Remembrance Day. Its appeal may be attributed to its melancholy focus on the makeshift graves of the dead and its earnest attempt to create an empathetic connection with the reader: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“ … Short days ago </p>
<p>We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,</p>
<p>Loved, and were loved, and now we lie,</p>
<p>In Flanders Fields.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>What follows from this poignant memory of being alive, however, is a command to “Take up our quarrel with the foe,” and a warning that these dead will not sleep until we, the readers, avenge their death on the battlefield. </p>
<p>The directive to continue the war until the foe is vanquished is antithetical to the spirit of Remembrance Day as I conceive of it. It’s similarly antithetical to the finest <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/english/efr027">British poetry of the First World War, including that penned by Wilfrid Owen</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Cover of 'The Hydra' magazine." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367270/original/file-20201103-21-ate5yx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367270/original/file-20201103-21-ate5yx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=757&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367270/original/file-20201103-21-ate5yx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=757&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367270/original/file-20201103-21-ate5yx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=757&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367270/original/file-20201103-21-ate5yx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=951&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367270/original/file-20201103-21-ate5yx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=951&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367270/original/file-20201103-21-ate5yx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=951&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Wilfred Owen edited six issues of the Craiglockhart War Hospital magazine, ‘The Hydra,’ while being treated for shell shock, including the July 21, 1917, issue.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(The First World War Poetry Digital Archive, English Faculty Library, University of Oxford)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Poetry & shell-shock</h2>
<p>Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est” has an unambiguous anti-war message, and it works skillfully to <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/555653">immerse the reader in a subsuming, visceral representation of the lived experience</a> of the frontline soldier. </p>
<p>Unlike McCrae, Owen never identifies the “foe” as the German soldiers in their trenches, but rather directs his ire at those at the home front who perpetuate, or simply believe in, the propaganda glorifying the war. The same can be said for Owen’s compatriot <a href="https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/max-egremont/siegfried-sassoon/9781447243281">writer and friend, Siegfried Sassoon</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/owen-sassoon-and-graves-how-a-golf-club-in-scotland-became-the-crucible-for-the-greatest-war-poetry-80229">Owen, Sassoon and Graves: how a golf club in Scotland became the crucible for the greatest war poetry</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Both Sassoon and Owen — who met in 1916 while they were both <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/014107680609900716">recovering from shell shock</a> at the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/30GBzxnZBKH59jvSBbqDrWr/how-craiglockhart-in-edinburgh-turned-wilfred-owen-into-the-voice-of-world-war-one">Craiglockhart Medical Hospital in Edinburgh</a> — felt that <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57368/glory-of-women">young men like themselves had been betrayed</a> as objects of hero worship by their country. </p>
<p>The title “Dulce et Decorum Est,” is <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Horace-Roman-poet">from Horace’s</a> epigrammatic line “<a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/podcasts/76735/anything-but-sweet">Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” (it is sweet and proper to die for one’s country)</a>, which is <a href="https://military.wikia.org/wiki/Dulce_et_decorum_est_pro_patria_mori#:%7E:text=The%20phrase%20can%20be%20found%20at%20the%20front%20entrance%20to,1778%2C%20erected%203%20July%201878">still inscribed on many war memorials</a>. At the end, the poem excoriates this motto as “the old Lie.”</p>
<h2>Angry rebuke</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Book cover with a sketch of a soldier." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367334/original/file-20201103-19-9kl4yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367334/original/file-20201103-19-9kl4yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367334/original/file-20201103-19-9kl4yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367334/original/file-20201103-19-9kl4yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367334/original/file-20201103-19-9kl4yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=972&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367334/original/file-20201103-19-9kl4yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=972&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367334/original/file-20201103-19-9kl4yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=972&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jessie Pope’s War Poems, published 1915 by Grant Richards.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/jessie-popes-war-poems">(British Library)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Owen’s poem is an angry rebuke to jingoistic poets of his time, <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/jessie-pope">such as Jessie Pope</a>, whose <a href="https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/ariel/article/view/31814">wartime poems aimed</a> to rally <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/jessie-popes-war-poems">and entice new recruits</a> and lift up “<a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57296/war-girls">war girls</a>.”</p>
<p>In 28 lines, Owen strives to convey, as accurately and brutally as possible, the daily horror experienced by front-line soldiers. At once, his poem is conventional — adhering to <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/iambic-pentameter">iambic pentameter</a> and a strict rhyme scheme — and highly innovative. His language is designed to provoke emotion in the reader, as we see from the opening four lines:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,</p>
<p>Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,</p>
<p>Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,</p>
<p>And towards our distant rest began to trudge.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The similes comparing the soldiers to “beggars” and “hags” are striking, but so too is the use of the first-person plural to describe the soldiers. </p>
<p>The words “sludge” and “trudge” stand out in this stanza for being distinctly vulgar in their context, while exemplifying the onomatopoeic language that Owen uses to help us experience the soldiers’ fatigue. The elongated vowel sound — “uh” — perfectly mimics the weary drag of the soldiers’ feet as they “trudge” through the muck. </p>
<p>The lethargic pace of the first lines swiftly accelerates when the soldiers are subjected to a gas attack: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! — An ecstasy of fumbling </p>
<p>Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The reader must accelerate their reading pace and perhaps even experience a quickening heart rate alongside the soldiers. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two men carry a wounded soldier." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367720/original/file-20201105-21-1crh88u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367720/original/file-20201105-21-1crh88u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367720/original/file-20201105-21-1crh88u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367720/original/file-20201105-21-1crh88u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367720/original/file-20201105-21-1crh88u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367720/original/file-20201105-21-1crh88u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367720/original/file-20201105-21-1crh88u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bringing in the wounded, Vimy Ridge, April 1917.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/">(Canada. Department of National Defence. Library and Archives Canada, PA-001042/Flickr)</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘I saw him drowning’</h2>
<p>The rest of the poem is focused on the lone man who didn’t secure his helmet in time, and who the narrator is forced to watch entering his death throes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“But someone still was yelling out and stumbling</p>
<p>And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—</p>
<p>Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,</p>
<p>As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.”</p>
<p>In all my dreams before my helpless sight,</p>
<p>He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.“</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These lines are thick with active verbs; the suffix "ing” dominates the description of the gas attack, and the lines that follow conclude the poem:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace</p>
<p>Behind the wagon that we flung him in,</p>
<p>And watch the white eyes writhing in his face …</p>
<p>My friend, you would not tell with such high zest</p>
<p>To children ardent for some desperate glory …”</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>No peace for the dying</h2>
<p>In these final twelve lines of the poem the “we” shifts to “you,” when Owen attacks the notion of glorifying war without any direct experience. The “you” may be both a direct reference to Pope and the kind of audience she sought to capture: Owen originally <a href="https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-98109">dedicated the poem in his original manuscript “To Jessie Pope, etc.,” and then in another version “To a Certain Poetess</a>.” </p>
<p>The biggest shock produced by “Dulce et Decorum Est,” though, is when we realize the victim is still alive at the poem’s end — or, still dying. </p>
<p>Owen does not allow this man to slip off into the ruminative <a href="https://doi.org/10.1503/cmaj.091794">afterlife experienced by McCrae’s war dead</a>. He keeps his victim suspended in the act of dying as a way of preserving the poem’s fraught message. There is no peace for this man, until “you,” the reader, reject the “old Lie” and fight to end the war.</p>
<p>Owen was killed in action a <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/poet-wilfred-owen-killed-in-action">week before the war’s end, on Nov. 4, 1918</a>.</p>
<p>Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est” is a meticulously crafted poem of shock and haunting. It might do us good to feel such haunting, such shock, every Nov. 11.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/148060/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Libin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
British poet Wilfred Owen told readers there is no peace for the dying soldier until we fight against the lie that it is sweet and proper to die for one’s country.
Mark Libin, Associate Professor, Department of English, Theatre, Film & Media, University of Manitoba
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/126698
2019-11-11T13:06:13Z
2019-11-11T13:06:13Z
Remembrance Day: the enduring nature of the first two-minute silence
<p>At 11am on November 11 1919 a great silence fell over the British Empire. Everywhere people stood silently: in their workplaces, on the street, assembled in public squares, before war memorials and in churches from Sydney to Ontario and New Delhi to Edinburgh. At the Cenotaph in London, visiting Australian Methodist minister <a href="https://archive.org/stream/AnzacCommemoration/Anzac%20Commemoration_djvu.txt">J. W. Burton recalled</a> that the crowd was overwhelmed by an “awful silence”, which “was so intense that the flutter of the pigeons’ wings away above us in the calm sky seemed to deepen it”. For two minutes people were united by the silence. </p>
<p>In spite of all the divisions and pain caused by the war and regardless of political or religious differences, the simple act of pausing for quiet remembrance became the most successful monument to the dead.</p>
<p>Symbolically marking the first anniversary of the signing of the armistice, which concluded the World War I, the first two minutes silence was intended to bring together a grieving empire. More than a million servicemen and women had been lost, many more had been injured, and families and communities were grappling with the upheaval to their lives.</p>
<p>The social dislocation caused by this mass sorrow was made worse for those who had lost loved ones abroad and were denied the ordinary practices of mourning, such as funerals with all their traditions and comforting rituals. Although <a href="https://www.cwgc.org/about-us/history-of-the-cwgc">the Imperial War Graves Commission</a> was established in 1917, many would never be able to see the final resting places of the dead. </p>
<p>As the first anniversary of the end of the war approached, the Imperial government was faced with how to mark it. The proposal for holding an empire-wide silence was brought to the attention of the British Imperial cabinet by the colonial secretary, Lord Milner. Milner <a href="http://www.theheritageportal.co.za/article/traditional-two-minutes-silence-remembrance-was-first-observed-cape-town">had been lobbied by Sir Percy Fitzpatrick</a> – a South African politician inspired by the three-minute silence daily observed in Cape Town after the noonday gun. In a letter to Milner, Fitzpatrick emphasised the symbolic power of two minutes, where there would be “from the heart of the empire to its uttermost limits, just silence and remembrance”.</p>
<p>There was reason to believe the silence would be successful. Similar silences had been held throughout the war, in England, South Africa and Australia. In 1916, an Anglican clergyman in Australia, Canon David Garland organised two-minute silences as part of an <a href="https://www.csu.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/789226/Moses.pdf">ANZAC Day commemoration</a>. His innovation had been to treat it as an ecumenical moment – a bringing together of people from different religious traditions. Silence bridged sectarian differences as Protestants disavowed prayers for the dead, and Catholics could not be led in prayer by non-Catholic clergy. For the same reason, the silence was also inclusive of the many Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and others in India and the rest of the colonial empire that had contributed to the war effort and suffered great losses. </p>
<p>On the day, things proceeded smoothly, with bells and factory whistles and other arrangements working to synchronise the silence. The effect, <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/20392697">a writer for the Brisbane Courier</a>, now The Courier-Mail, noted was a remarkable sight as: “Commerce was suspended, traffic came to a standstill, trains and trams ceased running, and the community observed a solemn prayerful silence, calling to mind the mercy of God and the heroism of her sailors and soldiers.”</p>
<p>A Times correspondent riding a London bus that had stopped, spoke of how the sheer force of the collective emotion of the moment confounded cynics. Others reflected that it offered “<a href="https://gdc.gale.com/gdc/artemis/NewspapersDetailsPage/NewspapersDetailsWindow?disableHighlighting=false&displayGroupName=DVI-Newspapers&docIndex=8&prodId=TTDA&mode=view&limiter=DA+119100101+-+119191231&display-query=OQE+two+minutes+silence&contentModules=&action=e&sortBy=&windowstate=normal&currPage=1&dviSelectedPage=&scanId=&query=OQE+two+minutes+silence&search_within_results=&p=TTDA&catId=&displayGroups=&documentId=GALE%7CCS268766572&activityType=AdvancedSearch&failOverType=&commentary=&source=Bookmark&u=cambuni&jsid=b99708eb817947f2ad61974e366424f9">a glimpse into the Nation’s soul</a>” and that as life slowly resumed, things had been permanently changed by the silence as the private loss of the “humble widow” became public, shared now by everybody.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1193835772484497414"}"></div></p>
<p>The two-minute silence continues to be successful because it is a simple collective act. For the first silence all it took was a <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/15844538">command from the king for everything to cease</a>. So that: “In perfect stillness, the thoughts of everyone may be concentrated on reverent remembrance of the Glorious Dead.” It was short enough to focus the mind, but long enough to mean something. It was later rumoured that the Grenadier Guards were enlisted for an informal rehearsal of silences of varying length, where it was decided that two minutes was ideal. </p>
<p>A century on, people still gather and observe two minutes of silence. The dead of subsequent conflicts join the legions of the lost remembered in that hallowed quiet. Its universality has led it to become a powerful response to many human tragedies, like after the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4682885.stm">July 7 2005 London bombings</a>, or on <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/uknews/5159154/Hillsborough-disaster-Thousands-gather-in-Liverpool-and-Sheffield-for-the-20th-anniversary.html?image=21">the anniversary of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster</a>. The enduring success of the two-minute silence is for the simple reason that, as for the millions across the British Empire who fell silent in 1919, there are some moments when there are no suitable words to collectively express the emotions we might feel. There is a poetic solidarity in silence.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126698/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel McKay does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The first two-minute silence in 1919 was designed as a moment that could unite people across many divides. It has become a collective means of commemoration for all manner of tragedies
Daniel McKay, PhD Candidate in History, University of Cambridge
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/126517
2019-11-10T18:56:47Z
2019-11-10T18:56:47Z
Why Australia is still grappling with the legacy of the first world war
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300790/original/file-20191107-10973-184r18q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C1%2C908%2C617&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Soldiers in Anzac Cove. The war had driven Australians apart in the demands it made upon the people.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library of Victoria </span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Historians have long been engaged in a fractious, sometimes spiteful, debate about <a href="https://uwap.uwa.edu.au/collections/bart-ziino/products/a-distant-grief-australians-war-graves-and-the-great-war">the legacies</a> of the first world war. This is especially so because the politics of the war continue to resonate in our own discussions of national identity and purpose. </p>
<p>We debate the extent to which the Anzac tradition reflects our understanding of what makes a good Australian, and how important our cultural affinities are with Britain. Did the war curtail a progressive spirit, and entrench political conservatism, or did it encourage a new confidence in ourselves?</p>
<p>These evaluations were already present the moment the war ended in November 1918. Australians had endured a terrible trauma. Sixty thousand of them were dead from a population of not quite 5 million. Another 150,000 returned sick or wounded, physically and mentally.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/world-politics-explainer-the-great-war-wwi-100462">World politics explainer: The Great War (WWI)</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Those at home were quick to draw attention to their own sufferings, too. They had known the war not only in its military dimensions, but as an ordeal of waiting and worrying, of constantly fearing the worst. The Victorian parliamentarian John Percy Jones <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=Gq22DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT51&lpg=PT51&dq=has+kept+me+in+a+condition+of+mental+agony.+I+am+hardly+able+to+realise+even+yet+that+the+fearful+times+through+which+we+have+been+passing+are+now+over.&source=bl&ots=gftQ5v2AeR&sig=ACfU3U3EqymUj7GIMDoTisTk2QYJuL_p4A&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj5kZfintnlAhUiUI8KHcBnAowQ6AEwAHoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=has%20kept%20me%20in%20a%20condition%20of%20mental%20agony.%20I%20am%20hardly%20able%20to%20realise%20even%20yet%20that%20the%20fearful%20times%20through%20which%20we%20have%20been%20passing%20are%20now%20over.&f=false">simply declared</a> the war</p>
<blockquote>
<p>has kept me in a condition of mental agony. I am hardly able to realise even yet that the fearful times through which we have been passing are now over.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>What, then, should we make of that sacrifice? Some called the nation to unity around the experience of the war, and in doing so elevated the Anzacs to the peak of Australian virtue. </p>
<p>In the federal parliament, Senator Edward Millen <a href="https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id:%22hansard80/hansards80/1918-11-12/0009%22">declared</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>this war, amongst other things, has made Australia a nation in a sense that it was not before. It has given us a new conception of national life.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>A divided nation</h2>
<p>But it was also clear the war had driven apart Australians in the demands it made on the people. Calls to unity faltered, as intense debates over recruiting for the army crystallised in two failed attempts <a href="https://www.oldtreasurybuilding.org.au/the-first-conscription-referendum-1916/">to endorse</a> compulsory military service by plebiscite. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300802/original/file-20191107-10924-1i26iop.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300802/original/file-20191107-10924-1i26iop.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300802/original/file-20191107-10924-1i26iop.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300802/original/file-20191107-10924-1i26iop.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300802/original/file-20191107-10924-1i26iop.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300802/original/file-20191107-10924-1i26iop.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300802/original/file-20191107-10924-1i26iop.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300802/original/file-20191107-10924-1i26iop.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Armistice celebrations in 1918. Conscription campaigns polarised Australian politics and society.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-162929771">National Library of Australia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The conscription campaigns divided Australians bitterly. Those who voted against the principle found their loyalty to nation and empire questioned. Those in favour faced accusations they betrayed Australia’s future by sending its young men to die.</p>
<p>Australians voted against conscription <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/visit/exhibitions/anzac-voices/conscription">in October 1916 and again in December 1917</a>, but the effect was still to polarise Australian politics and society. The Labor Party split over the issue. Prime Minister Billy Hughes <a href="https://billyhughes.moadoph.gov.au/conscription">walked out and formed government</a> with his erstwhile opponents. </p>
<p>The party’s now unequivocal anti-conscription sentiments found it tarred with the brush of disloyalty and ensured a conservative ascendancy in federal politics until 1929.</p>
<p>Even in private life, those political divisions were deep and abiding. One woman wrote to her soldier husband at the front that she had broken off friendships over the issue: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>they don’t come here now since conscription I told them what I thought of them.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Returned soldiers as ‘most deserving’</h2>
<p>It is small wonder that those on the political left – many historians included – should feel uncomfortable about the effects of the first world war on Australian society and culture. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300806/original/file-20191108-10919-1xsilnm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300806/original/file-20191108-10919-1xsilnm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300806/original/file-20191108-10919-1xsilnm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300806/original/file-20191108-10919-1xsilnm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300806/original/file-20191108-10919-1xsilnm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300806/original/file-20191108-10919-1xsilnm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=693&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300806/original/file-20191108-10919-1xsilnm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=693&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300806/original/file-20191108-10919-1xsilnm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=693&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dugout at Gallipoli. 60,000 Australians were killed in the First World War.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library of Victoria</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The tendency of the war had been to draw Australia more closely into the British Empire’s embrace. The German threat provoked deep expressions of cultural unity with Britain from Australians, and further encouraged them to see their future security in terms of even closer defence and economic ties with the empire.</p>
<p>The Anzac tradition itself embodied those difficult politics, as it promoted the Empire-loyal “digger” as the embodiment of the Australian national character. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/100-years-since-the-ww1-armistice-remembrance-day-remains-a-powerful-reminder-of-the-cost-of-war-103232">100 years since the WW1 Armistice, Remembrance Day remains a powerful reminder of the cost of war</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In Anzac’s rhetoric, Australian soldiers had proved themselves the exemplars of a series of desirable qualities such as courage, initiative, and loyalty to mates. But they had not so much achieved independence for Australia as raised Australia to equality within a British brotherhood.</p>
<p>For those on the political left, the veneration of the digger displaced all other potential contributions to the making of Australian nationhood, including the contributions of women, pacifists and political radicals. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300803/original/file-20191108-10901-1mdtzm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300803/original/file-20191108-10901-1mdtzm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300803/original/file-20191108-10901-1mdtzm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=929&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300803/original/file-20191108-10901-1mdtzm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=929&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300803/original/file-20191108-10901-1mdtzm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=929&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300803/original/file-20191108-10901-1mdtzm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1168&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300803/original/file-20191108-10901-1mdtzm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1168&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300803/original/file-20191108-10901-1mdtzm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1168&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Australian soldiers became the embodiment of national character, and they assumed the position of the most deserving in citizenship hierarchies.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library of Queensland</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It reorganised hierarchies of citizenship, so returned soldiers assumed the position of the most deserving, whether in terms of government largesse or in cultural terms as the embodiment of national character.</p>
<p>But conservative historians have naturally been much more comfortable with that interpretation of the war’s effects than their counterparts. </p>
<p>It speaks to a sense that Australians held close to their British descent and traditions, while also recognising the economic and security value of continued close ties. And it gave Australians a figure whose characteristics were not only to be admired, but emulated in civic life and subsequent conflicts.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-great-war-shaped-the-foundations-of-australias-future-38860">How the Great War shaped the foundations of Australia's future</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>A century on from the national trauma of 1914-18, the politics of that event remain present. The kind of Australia we prefer to see depends on whether we regret or embrace the effects of the first world war on Australian politics and culture. </p>
<p>As we gather again on the anniversary of the end of the “war to end all wars”, we might observe that the conclusion of the war only started the long and continuing effort to come to terms with its meaning.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126517/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bart Ziino has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>
The politics of the war continue to resonate in our discussions of national identity and purpose.
Bart Ziino, Senior Lecturer, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Deakin University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/126252
2019-11-07T21:15:43Z
2019-11-07T21:15:43Z
The importance of personal memory on Remembrance Day
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300558/original/file-20191107-12521-ec4d0r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=451%2C105%2C2816%2C2054&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Memory can serve as a heavy reminder of the past. Indigenous people gather in Shubenacadie, N.S., in June 2008 to remember the residents of a former residential school and the abuses they suffered.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Mike Dembeck</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In our digital age, we have increasingly outsourced memory to electronic devices. Without technology, many of us no longer remember where we need to be most of the time, and find it hard to keep track of phone numbers or birthdays. We are living through a profound shift in the practice of memory. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, there remains something significant about what and how humans remember. On Nov. 11, an annual international day of remembrance, it is worth reflecting on the changing nature of memory. </p>
<p>Our interdisciplinary research leads us to explore how memory can provide a powerful tool as we seek to address humanity’s most <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvbtzpfm">intractable political, sociological and environmental problems</a>.</p>
<p>On Turtle Island (North America), memory runs deep. For thousands of years before the notion of Canada, Indigenous Peoples lived on this land, passing memories across generations through oral traditions. This chain of knowledge, robust and vibrant, was stretched to a near breaking point by colonial oppression enacted through systems like Indian Residential Schools. </p>
<p>In the face of such inter-generational trauma, memory serves as a heavy reminder of the past, a burden to be carried by those who survived. <a href="http://www.trc.ca/">The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada</a> was a process of collective remembering, bringing intensely personal memories into the public arena; it was remembrance as a form of accountability for settler society.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300359/original/file-20191105-88428-1gvx3pq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300359/original/file-20191105-88428-1gvx3pq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300359/original/file-20191105-88428-1gvx3pq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300359/original/file-20191105-88428-1gvx3pq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300359/original/file-20191105-88428-1gvx3pq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300359/original/file-20191105-88428-1gvx3pq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300359/original/file-20191105-88428-1gvx3pq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Second World War museum in Gdansk, Poland.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Eduardo C.G. / Unsplash</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Memory as a call to action</h2>
<p>Memory works against colonialism in other ways. In northern British Columbia, for example, the potlatch system, a gift-giving ceremonial feast, once banned under colonial rule, was re-established by Indigenous communities after a century in which its memory had been kept alive in private places. Through the memories of Indigenous elders, <a href="http://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvbtzpfm.4">a new generation was able to rekindle long-held practices, and re-establish a connection to ancestors and territory</a>. </p>
<p>The long arc of traditional knowledge contrasts with modern notions of living in the moment, where yesterday offers little guidance about what today may bring, let alone tomorrow. We have forgotten Earth as it was not so long ago — when the skies darkened with flocks of passenger pigeons, <a href="http://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvbtzpfm.5">the Grand Banks choked thick with cod and the prairies ran with buffalo</a>.</p>
<p>The new normal, forged from forgetfulness, masks the environmental devastation of the last century. Oblivious, we fail to hear the call to action already issued by climate change. Here, too, the memory of what has been lost may help overcome our collective environmental inertia.</p>
<p>We do not face the task of critical remembering alone. Earth itself provides a repository of climate history, <a href="http://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvbtzpfm.6">engraved in glacial ice and in deep ocean sediment</a>. So important is this bank of memories that a group of international scientists, faced with the rapidly disappearing glaciers, has launched the Ice Memory project, creating a global ice sanctuary in Antarctica. </p>
<p>In the future, one may be able to visit a climate museum, where ice cores are preserved as memory objects of the glaciers, and the environments, that once were. </p>
<h2>Whose memories are remembered?</h2>
<p>There are other ways in which broader memory guides us to necessary change for the future. Yet, too often, our monuments of remembrance and the objects we preserve in museums tell partial stories. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300358/original/file-20191105-88403-8wkg51.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300358/original/file-20191105-88403-8wkg51.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300358/original/file-20191105-88403-8wkg51.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300358/original/file-20191105-88403-8wkg51.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300358/original/file-20191105-88403-8wkg51.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300358/original/file-20191105-88403-8wkg51.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300358/original/file-20191105-88403-8wkg51.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">First World War: Whose memories are memorialized?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">British Library/Unsplash</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Increasingly, scholars are learning to ask who and what is missing and what goes unacknowledged. For example, in remembering those who served in the First World War, what of the stories of the non-western combatants who fought and fell in the trenches? Western official historical accounts need to open up their searches and recollections to include <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvbtzpfm.27">marginalized communities whose experiences have been excluded from official western histories</a>. The democratization of memory <a href="http://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvbtzpfm.24">promises a more equal future</a>.</p>
<p>The #MeToo movement similarly asks for radical change in the memories that count, and in our ability to listen to complex personal recollection. But equally, it requires us to ask what difference such painful remembering serves. What has been the #MeToo movement’s impact on gendered power? Do we really need to hear more to know what is wrong? </p>
<p>Retelling can weigh heavily on the survivor, particularly if nothing shifts in the structures of power. This raises the question of not whether these memories matter — they do — but rather of <a href="http://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvbtzpfm.23">our obligation to be galvanized into change by what they tell us</a>.</p>
<h2>Aspirations for tomorrow</h2>
<p>Memory must inform our present for us to imagine a better future. </p>
<p>Neurological research shows that regions of the brain that store and reconstruct memory are also involved in <a href="http://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvbtzpfm.14">our ability to imagine what tomorrow might bring</a>. This was illustrated dramatically by the case of Kent Cochrane, a Canadian who lost his short-term memory after a traumatic brain injury he sustained in a motorcycle accident. </p>
<p>Cochrane used notes left on the refrigerator by his caregivers to recall the day-to-day events of his life. When asked to imagine the future, he couldn’t. He described it as the “blankness” of an empty room. Such blankness sounds terrifying, but it also has one redeeming quality; unfettered possibility.</p>
<p>However, we should resist being beguiled by the lure of the future to the point of amnesia about our past. Our aspirations for tomorrow — a future of carbon neutrality, gender equality, justice for Indigenous peoples — must be informed by our experience and the histories we inherit. </p>
<p>The act of remembering doesn’t consign us to the past. By understanding both the insights and the limits of memory, we reach for a world that is more inclusive and healthier than the one we currently inhabit.</p>
<p>[ <em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/ca/newsletters?utm_source=TCCA&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126252/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Philippe Tortell receives funding from NSERC, ArcticNet, MEOPAR. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Margot Young receives funding from SSHRCC, Peter Wall Institute, UBC Allard School of Law, Federation of Law Societies. She is currently on the Board of Directors, for the David Suzuki Foundation and Justice for Girls. She is a Research Associate/Fellow with the CCPA-BC Office and the Broadbent Institute.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Turin receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies.</span></em></p>
Memories can be powerful tools to address humanity’s most difficult political, sociological and environmental problems
Philippe Tortell, Professor and Head, Dept. of Earth, Ocean & Atmospheric Sciences, University of British Columbia
Margot Young, Professor of Law, University of British Columbia
Mark Turin, Associate professor, Department of Anthropology, University of British Columbia
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/106765
2018-11-13T05:04:45Z
2018-11-13T05:04:45Z
On the offensive: why Virgin Australia gets called a publicity hound
<p>Parading your patriotism might look like a corporate plan that can’t possibly go wrong. ANZAC Day sporting commemorations by the AFL and NRL, for example, are hugely successful, embraced by veterans groups and the general public alike. </p>
<p>But Virgin Australia’s attempt to get in on the action has proven as much a strategic miscalculation as the Gallipoli campaign.</p>
<p>A week before Remembrance Day the airline announced it would jump aboard a NewsCorp-confected campaign by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/nov/04/virgin-australia-honours-veterans-on-flights">emulating US airlines</a> that publicly honour military personnel on their flights. </p>
<p>Within 24 hours it was retreating in disarray.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/100-years-since-the-ww1-armistice-remembrance-day-remains-a-powerful-reminder-of-the-cost-of-war-103232">100 years since the WW1 Armistice, Remembrance Day remains a powerful reminder of the cost of war</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Its plan didn’t go quite as far as the Americans do. Other passengers would not be expected to stand up and applaud. Nor would it offer a military discount, as Virgin Atlantic does. But it did promise proclamations of gratitude and priority boarding for military veterans.</p>
<p>Veterans’ representatives described the idea as embarrassing, tokenistic and opportunistic. Chief among the criticisms: Virgin Australia was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/nov/05/virgin-australia-priority-boarding-for-veterans-derided-by-defence-association">fatally misreading the local culture</a> by thinking it could import an American practice out of step with the Australian temperament. </p>
<p>How did the airline blunder so badly? </p>
<p>This is a case study in how to get the fundamentals of corporate social responsibility completely wrong. Virgin Australia chose the wrong cause to support, in the wrong way. </p>
<p>There are three key things it apparently failed to do. Other companies should take note, or risk their own embrace of social causes being dismissed as publicity chasing. </p>
<h2>No imagination</h2>
<p>Virgin Australia apparently didn’t imagine the beneficiaries might think its plan hasty and mindless.</p>
<p>It didn’t factor in that military veterans might be uncomfortable with being singled out for public thanks. As Rodger Shanahan, a research fellow at the Lowy Institute and former army officer <a href="https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/would-you-like-thanks">noted</a>, there are many others “who provide service to the community more continually, and are exposed to more trauma on a much more regular basis than the average Australian Defence Force member”. </p>
<p>It short, it didn’t put itself in the stakeholders’ shoes.</p>
<p>Understanding stakeholders is essential to the success of a company’s social responsibility initiatives. A better appreciation of military veterans would have led it to a different plan. </p>
<h2>Leaping before listening</h2>
<p>Being able to see an issue from the perspective of stakeholders is far easier if you listen to them first.</p>
<p>Virgin declared it would consult with veterans’ organisations only after its announcement bombed. It should have consulted before. Involving stakeholders in the decision-making process could have avoided the controversy. </p>
<p>Nowadays companies can easily use social media to engage stakeholders and gauge community sentiment prior to making or announcing a decision. Sony and Microsoft are <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10696679.2017.1389238">good case studies</a>. Both have successfully used social media prior to launching their new game consoles to involve consumers in “cocreation”. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/this-remembrance-day-digital-commemoration-makes-it-impossible-to-forget-65560">This Remembrance Day, digital commemoration makes it impossible to forget</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>With tools like <a href="https://www.salesforce.com/au/products/marketing-cloud/social-media-marketing/">Social Studio</a> any company can analyse what is being said about it across internet platforms. Reviewing this sentiment can be provide insight and ideas. Like this one:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I am happy that I served my country to protect the values that we Australians hold dear but do not want to see Australia follow the path of America… Virgin Australia would do better by providing some discounts to airfares or Lounge access rather that what I see proposed today.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Of course, social media should not be the only medium for obtaining feedback. Other techniques such as focus group and surveys are also important. But feedback from stakeholders is tremendously valuable. </p>
<h2>Fitness test</h2>
<p>Corporate social responsibility initiatives need to be the right fit. <a href="https://www.inderscienceonline.com/doi/abs/10.1504/IJMP.2015.068301">Research</a> shows the importance of stakeholders seeing the connection between a company and the causes it supports. </p>
<p>That’s probably why the AFL and NRL can get away with leveraging the “ANZAC spirit” to promote football games. Those who died at Gallipoli and professional footballers at least share the common attribute of being young men.</p>
<p>In the case of Virgin Australia, simply importing an American idea failed to take account of the need to show a connection between military personnel and the airline’s brand values in the Australian market. </p>
<p>What this proves is that companies need to be smarter and more sensitive than media and politicians that see advantages in sanctifying military service.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-politics-of-public-monuments-its-time-australians-looked-at-what-and-whom-we-commemorate-82751">The politics of public monuments: it's time Australians looked at what, and whom, we commemorate</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Other Australian companies can learn from Virgin’s military blunder. The lesson here is that corporate social responsibility needs to be driven by real engagement, and doing the hard yards, not by short-term opportunism. </p>
<p>Perhaps they can take the sentiments of Rodger Shanahan to heart and put more energy into recognising “all those who work on behalf of the greater good in often traumatic, and always difficult circumstances at home”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/106765/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mehran Nejati does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Virgin Australia’s great military blunder of 2018 is a case study in corporate social responsibility gone wrong.
Mehran Nejati, Senior Lecturer in Management, Edith Cowan University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/103232
2018-11-08T19:36:52Z
2018-11-08T19:36:52Z
100 years since the WW1 Armistice, Remembrance Day remains a powerful reminder of the cost of war
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244276/original/file-20181107-74769-g5k94f.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A crowd at Martin Place, Sydney, celebrates the news of the signing of the Armistice on November 11 1918.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Australian War Memorial</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>One hundred years ago – on November 11 1918, at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month – millions of men laid down their guns. </p>
<p>This was Armistice Day, the end of the first world war. </p>
<p><a href="https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/germany">Germany</a>, the last belligerent standing among the <a href="https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/the_military_collapse_of_the_central_powers">Central Powers</a>, had collapsed militarily, economically and politically.</p>
<p>Armistice Day – later known as Remembrance Day – has since been commemorated every year. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/world-politics-explainer-the-great-war-wwi-100462">World politics explainer: The Great War (WWI)</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Ending the war</h2>
<p>On November 11 1918, aboard Marshall <a href="https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/foch_ferdinand">Ferdinand Foch’s</a> <a href="http://www.musee-armistice-14-18.fr/visiter-le-memorial/le-museum/le-wagon-de-larmistice/3160813/">train carriage</a>, a few <a href="https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/plenipotentiary">plenipotentiaries</a> of Germany and the main Allied nations signed a short document that ordered a ceasefire, effective from 11am. In doing so, they put an end to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/world-politics-explainer-the-great-war-wwi-100462">global carnage</a> that had started in August 1914 and had killed more than 10 million combatants and 6 million civilians. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244516/original/file-20181108-74778-yidvzm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244516/original/file-20181108-74778-yidvzm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=792&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244516/original/file-20181108-74778-yidvzm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=792&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244516/original/file-20181108-74778-yidvzm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=792&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244516/original/file-20181108-74778-yidvzm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=995&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244516/original/file-20181108-74778-yidvzm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=995&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244516/original/file-20181108-74778-yidvzm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=995&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">French Marshal Ferdinand Foch (second from the right), in Compiègne Forest, minutes after the signature of the Armistice.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikicommons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Notably, though this document stopped combat, it did not formally end the war. Indeed, Germany had sought an armistice in order to negotiate a formal peace treaty. This peace was secured eight months later, on June 28 1919, at the <a href="https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/the_paris_peace_conference_and_its_consequences">Paris Peace Conference</a>.</p>
<p>The Armistice also didn’t resolve localised conflicts resulting from the war. These raged on in parts of Eastern Europe and the Middle East through to the early 1920s. </p>
<p>But for most nations involved in the first world war, the armistice of November 11 was the day the fighting finally stopped, which is why it has become a major commemorative event across the globe.</p>
<h2>The first Armistice Day</h2>
<p>On the first Armistice Day, November 11 1918, crowds cheered on the streets of Allied countries such as Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the US, France and Belgium. People rejoiced at the ending of a period of <a href="https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/controversy_total_war">total mobilisation</a> that had affected every aspect of their lives, inflicting unprecedented hardship on soldiers and civilians alike. </p>
<p>But for those who had lost the war, the news of the armistice came as a shock. While some were relieved the conflict had ended, the sudden collapse of the German, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires provided a breeding ground for <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtfmonfZq8g">revolutionary movements</a> and further internal conflicts. For them, Armistice Day was a moment of anguish and bitterness.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/S1QSNP9ibBs?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Cheering crowds on Armistice Day.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The second Armistice Day (1919)</h2>
<p>After its first iteration, Armistice Day became a more formal and sombre commemoration, and was often held at war memorials. People were encouraged to remember the dead with respect and solemnity. </p>
<p>A dedicated time for silence became part of the ceremony and has been central to Remembrance Day commemorations ever since. In Britain, <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/115881021?searchTerm=armistice%20day%20silence%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20&searchLimits=l-decade=191%7C%7C%7Cl-year=1919">King George V</a> requested a two-minute silence, which was observed from 1919 onward across the Commonwealth. In France, the <em>minute de silence</em> was instituted in 1922.</p>
<p>Silence meant time for contemplation, reflection, introspection and, above all, respect. In multifaith empires where atheism was progressing, the gesture could conveniently replace a prayer.</p>
<p>Remembrance Day was deemed a civic duty for many, and the veterans would often take a lead role in its commemoration.</p>
<p>From then on, Armistice Day increasingly became known as Remembrance Day. The focus was no longer on the armistice and the end of the war: it became a day to remember, grieve and honour those who had died. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237666/original/file-20180924-7728-fu3mn1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237666/original/file-20180924-7728-fu3mn1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237666/original/file-20180924-7728-fu3mn1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237666/original/file-20180924-7728-fu3mn1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237666/original/file-20180924-7728-fu3mn1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237666/original/file-20180924-7728-fu3mn1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237666/original/file-20180924-7728-fu3mn1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Two-minute silence, Oxford Street, November 11 1919.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gallica, BNF</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The notion of sacrifice became central to Remembrance Day, as those still alive tried to give meaning to, and cope with, the deaths of their loved ones. The language of memory honoured the deceased, acknowledging that they had not sacrificed themselves in vain but for institutions and values such as country, king, God, freedom and so on. However, as time passed, this language came to be increasingly contested. </p>
<h2>Remembrance Day: the inter-wars and the second world war</h2>
<p>Remembrance Day was also used to protest against war in general. Some mourners and veterans refused to attend official commemorations. In doing so, they showcased their anger at the state-sanctioned carnage that the first world war had been. In France and Belgium in the 1920s and 1930s, for instance, large pacifist movements used Remembrance Day and some <a href="https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monument_aux_morts_pacifiste">war memorials</a> to stress the futility of war and nationalism. </p>
<p>Such Remembrance Day protests were of openly political nature, and historical contexts altered the meaning of these demonstrations. Across Nazi-occupied Europe, clandestine <a href="http://www.cheminsdememoire.gouv.fr/en/le-11-novembre-1940">Remembrance Day ceremonies</a> were used as a sign of protest against German occupation during the second world war, and to remind them they had been defeated in the previous war. </p>
<h2>Remembrance Day now</h2>
<p>Today, the commemoration of the November 11 armistice is marked in many countries across the globe (mostly those on the “winning” side of the war) under various names: Armistice Day, Remembrance Day, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/03/wearing-poppy-pledge-peace-sanitise-war-remembrance">Poppy</a> Day, <em>11 Novembre</em>, National Independence Day or Veterans Day. For some, the day is a <a href="https://www.officeholidays.com/countries/global/remembrance_day.php">public holiday</a>.</p>
<p>Every state celebrating Remembrance Day grants different meanings to its commemoration. Speeches in France deplore the loss of lives and insist on the value of peace during official ceremonies. In Poland, however, the day marks the <a href="https://www.polska.pl/tourism/traditions-and-holidays/independence-day/">rebirth of the nation</a> and a time to celebrate. </p>
<p>In the US, the commemoration is centred on the veterans of all wars, while in <a href="https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/commemoration_cult_of_the_fallen_australia">Australia</a> few people attend Remembrance Day. The crowds <a href="https://latrobe.rl.talis.com/items/C98D037F-1454-8FD8-EA3A-51E78EFCCBB6.html">prefer</a> attending <a href="https://www.afr.com/opinion/columnists/anzac-day-shows-how-much-the-politics-of-patriotism-have-changed-20170425-gvs5pn">Anzac Day</a> on April 25 – a more <a href="https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2012/december/1363672450/mark-mckenna/lest-we-inflate">patriotic</a> service and a public holiday. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244518/original/file-20181108-74769-6f4n9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244518/original/file-20181108-74769-6f4n9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244518/original/file-20181108-74769-6f4n9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244518/original/file-20181108-74769-6f4n9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244518/original/file-20181108-74769-6f4n9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244518/original/file-20181108-74769-6f4n9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244518/original/file-20181108-74769-6f4n9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Langemark German military cemetery, Belgium.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As the first world war fades further away in time, one way to keep remembering those who died in this conflict has been to progressively include the commemoration of the dead of more recent conflicts in Remembrance Day ceremonies, as is the case in the <a href="https://www.va.gov/opa/vetsday/vetdayhistory.asp">US</a>, the UK and <a href="https://www.defense.gouv.fr/actualites/memoire-et-culture/11-novembre-anniversaire-de-l-armistice-de-1918-et-hommage-a-tous-les-morts-pour-la-france">France</a>. The commemoration therefore remains relevant to a larger population but also prevents the multiplication of special days for official state commemorations.</p>
<p>Today, as in the past, protests continue to be a component of Remembrance Day. Recently, a man <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-12664346">was fined</a> £50 in the UK for burning a poppy on Remembrance Day to protest against current <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1363772/Muslim-extremist-burned-poppies-Armistice-Day-fined-just-50.html">deployment of British forces</a>. The commemoration has also been mobilised by different <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/11/poppies-culture-wars">far-right movements</a> across Europe to advance their agendas. </p>
<h2>A centenary of remembrance</h2>
<p>A hundred years after the event, Remembrance Day and first world war memorials still provide a time and place to remember those who fought and <a href="https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/war_losses">fell</a> in the conflict. For the most senior citizens among us, this is their parents’ generation; a past they still live with. </p>
<p>On November 11 2018, to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of one of the world’s deadliest conflicts, you may choose to attend a Remembrance Day service. You may choose not to, or not even notice that it is Remembrance Day.</p>
<p>During the minute of silence, you may reflect on the meaning of war and its long-lasting impacts, its futility or its glory, think about a family member, or the weather. This degree of versatility partly explains the endurance of Remembrance Day. An official and public event, but also a personal gesture that everyone can embed with their own meaning.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/103232/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Romain Fathi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
This year marks 100 years since the fighting stopped in the first world war. The commemoration of the armistice, Remembrance Day, remains potent but is also changing with the times.
Romain Fathi, Lecturer, History, Flinders University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/106489
2018-11-08T07:17:34Z
2018-11-08T07:17:34Z
Wearing the poppy has always been a political act – here’s why
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244280/original/file-20181107-74760-16nfmsn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">olavs via Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The annual argument over the politics of the red poppy is well and truly underway. LBC host James O’Brien <a href="https://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/james-obrien/supporters-of-far-right-no-right-to-wear-poppies/">recently declared</a> that supporters of the far-right have no business wearing the national symbol of remembrance, because they had effectively “switched sides” and become one with the very forces against which Britain battled during the 20th century. </p>
<p>From a very different stance, Manchester United footballer <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2018/11/05/football/nemanja-matic-manchester-united-poppy-serbia-spt-intl/index.html">Nemanja Matic</a> has movingly explained why he won’t wear the poppy during this weekend’s derby match against City (it reminds him of the NATO bombing of the former Yugoslavia when he was growing up there in the 1990s). And elsewhere, pundits and the public are debating – <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/41942346/remembrance-poppy-controversies-and-how-to-wear-it">as they do every year</a> – the fine details of poppy etiquette: who should wear it, who can’t wear it, and for how long prior to Remembrance Sunday should it be worn.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qlugxFTDVvY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Understanding the origins of the poppy certainly helps. It started in the immediate aftermath of World War I, when an American woman – <a href="http://www.greatwar.co.uk/people/moina-belle-michael.htm">Moina Michael</a> – persuaded the newly formed American Legion to adopt the poppy as its symbol of remembrance. She had been inspired by the famous poem of Canadian soldier John McCrae, <a href="http://www.greatwar.co.uk/poems/john-mccrae-in-flanders-fields.htm">In Flanders Fields</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In Flanders fields the poppies blow / Between the crosses, row on row…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As historian <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-silence-of-memory-9781859730010/">Adrian Gregory has explained</a>, her idea was for the artificial poppies to be manufactured in France “by women, for the benefit of children”. </p>
<p>In 1921, the British Legion was invited to participate and in 1922 – in order to provide employment for disabled veterans – manufacturing of the poppy shifted from France to Britain and the beneficiaries of the sales were now ex-servicemen in need. The poppy appeal became firmly joined to the charitable fund for ex-servicemen established by the former commander-in-chief of the British forces, Earl Haig. </p>
<p>So in many respects, the origins of the poppy appeal are praiseworthy. Yet “praiseworthy” is not the same as “non-political” – and the origins of the poppy appeal in Britain clearly lie with an organisation (the British Legion) and an individual (Earl Haig) who were committed to remembering the Great War in a certain way – as something horrific, yet necessary; terrible, yet worthy. </p>
<p>As such, the origins of the poppy are linked to some of the other symbols of remembrance produced by “official” culture in the post-1918 period: <a href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/what-is-the-cenotaph">the Cenotaph</a>, the <a href="https://www.westminster-abbey.org/abbey-commemorations/commemorations/unknown-warrior/">grave of the Unknown Warrior</a> and the cemeteries established overseas by the Imperial War Graves Commission (now the <a href="https://www.cwgc.org/">Commonwealth War Graves Commission</a>). The sincere (and well meant) statements of the British Legion notwithstanding, there has always been a political side to the poppy.</p>
<h2>Poppies for peace</h2>
<p>It is this detail that led some to question the red poppy back in the 1930s. In 1933, as governments in Western Europe began to rearm and remilitarise, the <a href="https://www.archive.coop/collections/coop-womens-guild">Co-operative Women’s Guild</a> started selling white poppies as a symbol of peace. In 1936, the white poppy was then adopted by the <a href="http://archive.ppu.org.uk/whitepoppy/white_cwg.html">Peace Pledge Union (PPU)</a> which still sells it today. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244293/original/file-20181107-74772-gd1kfd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244293/original/file-20181107-74772-gd1kfd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244293/original/file-20181107-74772-gd1kfd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244293/original/file-20181107-74772-gd1kfd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244293/original/file-20181107-74772-gd1kfd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244293/original/file-20181107-74772-gd1kfd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244293/original/file-20181107-74772-gd1kfd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">By the 1930s, white poppies became popular as a statement against increasing militarisation in Europe.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Peace Pledge Union</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For the PPU, conscious of the rising tensions of the 1930s, the red poppy had lost touch with its origins as a symbol of solemn remembrance. Instead, the PPU feared that the poppy had become compromised by resurgent nationalism. So they offered the white poppy in response – to wear it was to identify oneself as a pacifist willing to contest the increasingly disturbing political developments of the years before the outbreak of World War II.</p>
<p>Bearing this long history in mind, what are the key issues as people discuss and decide whether or not to wear the red poppy this Armistice Day, the centennial of the war’s end?</p>
<p>First, to buy and wear the red poppy is to associate oneself with almost a century of war remembrance, activity which has always been (and remains) “political”. No society can remember its wars and mourn its dead without ascribing to the violence and victims a meaning. The symbols a society duly produces – including the red poppy – carry an implicit “politics”. </p>
<p>Understood in these terms, the fact that some choose on principle not to wear the red poppy is entirely reasonable. To do so is not to insult the dead, but to question the purpose for which it is often said they died. I am profoundly sympathetic to such a sentiment and will quite happily defend the right of people not to wear the British Legion’s poppy (or indeed the right to wear the white poppy in its stead). </p>
<p>For those who declare that such acts are unacceptable, I would simply say that if – as countries such as Britain reasonably claim – the wars of the 20th century were fought to defend certain rights and liberties, then part of this was surely the right to dissent, the right to disagree, the right to follow the dictates of one’s conscience.</p>
<p>But it is also for this very reason that I will wear the red poppy this Sunday. Not as a mindless expression of nationalist chauvinism, nor in order to simply make acceptable the carnage and catastrophe of 20th-century war. Rather, like so many others, I will wear the British Legion’s poppy as a means to remember those who, on behalf of this nation, have gone to war and not returned. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244281/original/file-20181107-74775-7pho89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244281/original/file-20181107-74775-7pho89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244281/original/file-20181107-74775-7pho89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244281/original/file-20181107-74775-7pho89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244281/original/file-20181107-74775-7pho89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244281/original/file-20181107-74775-7pho89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244281/original/file-20181107-74775-7pho89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">All poppies are an act of remembrance.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bas Meelker via Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I will wear it to remember all those – soldier and civilian, men and women, adults and children – who have been killed, maimed, traumatised by conflict. And I will wear it because to do so is precisely to engage in a political act while at the same time humbly acknowledging the absolute right of others to do differently, according to their conscience and their politics. </p>
<p>Dissent and respectful disagreement are surely the hallmark of a healthy democracy and so, regardless of what you choose to do this Armistice, regardless of whether or not you choose to wear the red poppy, we must all be prepared to accept – and respect – that others might think and act differently.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>More <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/armistice-61797?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=Armistice">Armistice</a> articles, written by academic experts:</em></p>
<ul>
<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/world-war-i-the-birth-of-plastic-surgery-and-modern-anaesthesia-106191?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=%20Armistice">World War I: the birth of plastic surgery and modern anaesthesia
</a></em></p></li>
<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/they-shall-not-grow-old-world-war-i-film-a-masterpiece-of-skill-and-artistry-just-dont-call-it-a-documentary-105229?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=%20Armistice">They Shall Not Grow Old: World War I film a masterpiece of skill and artistry – just don’t call it a documentary
</a></em></p></li>
<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/wilfred-owen-100-years-on-poet-gave-voice-to-a-generation-of-doomed-youth-106014?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=%20Armistice">Wilfred Owen 100 years on: poet gave voice to a generation of doomed youth
</a></em></p></li>
</ul>
<p><em>For more evidence-based articles by academics, subscribe to our <a href="https://confirmsubscription.com/h/r/6F561B763B91E4C7?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=%20Armistice">newsletter</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/106489/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sam Edwards has previously received funding from the ESRC, the US-UK Fulbright Commission, and the US Army Military History Institute.</span></em></p>
Red or white, it doesn’t matter what colour your poppy is if you respect the sacrifice it represents.
Sam Edwards, Senior Lecturer in History, Manchester Metropolitan University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/106498
2018-11-07T15:49:29Z
2018-11-07T15:49:29Z
Anthill 31: World War I remembered – podcast
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244311/original/file-20181107-74787-avhemd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">shutterstock</span> </figcaption></figure><p>It was supposed to be the war to end all wars, and the sheer destructiveness of World War I was unprecedented for its time. More than 30 countries were involved, 65m men volunteered or were conscripted to fight and millions of civilians contributed to the war effort. Around 16m people died. And many of those who survived came home from the war psychologically and physically scarred for life. </p>
<p>This year marks the centenary of the end of the conflict and this episode of The Anthill podcast is focused on stories from the Great War, and the way it is being remembered 100 years later. </p>
<p>First, our host Annabel Bligh talks to Sean Lang, senior lecturer in history at Anglia Ruskin University, about how the Armistice came about at 11am on November 11, 1918 – and why it wasn’t actually the end of the fighting. </p>
<p>Next, we travel up to Scotland to hear from Neil McLennan, senior lecturer in education at the University of Aberdeen, about how he <a href="https://theconversation.com/owen-sassoon-and-graves-how-a-golf-club-in-scotland-became-the-crucible-for-the-greatest-war-poetry-80229">came across the letter which proved</a> that three of the great World War I poets – Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sasson and Robert Graves – actually met at a golf club near the Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh. McLennan and Paul Ferguson, associate professor of audio engineering at Edinburgh Napier University, also explain the genesis of a special concert they are organising to mark the centenary of the Armistice – involving musicians from all over the world.</p>
<p>And finally we hear what life was like for the men who refused to fight during the conflict. Lois Bibbings, professor of law, gender and history at the University of Bristol, explains how the clause which allowed men to object on the grounds of conscience was introduced when conscription began in Britain in 1916. Aled Eirug, senior lecturer at the school of management at Swansea University, whose grandfather was a conscientious objector in World War I, explains what life was like for some of the men who chose to go to work camps set up by the Home Office. And we hear from Ingrid Sharp, professor of German cultural and gender history at the University of Leeds, on the few men who refused to join the military in Germany, and how <a href="https://theconversation.com/life-was-even-tougher-for-the-german-conscientious-objectors-of-world-war-i-26715">life was even tougher for them</a>.</p>
<p>We’re always keen to hear what our listeners think about The Anthill. So we’ve created a short survey to gather your feedback and help us plan future podcasts at The Conversation. You can <a href="https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/NFYDXJK">find the survey here</a>. And you can always email us at podcast@theconversation.com too – we’d love to hear from you. </p>
<hr>
<p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-anthill/id1114423002?mt=2"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233721/original/file-20180827-75984-1gfuvlr.png" alt="Listen on Apple Podcasts" width="268" height="68"></a> <a href="https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly90aGVjb252ZXJzYXRpb24uY29tL3VrL3BvZGNhc3RzL3RoZS1hbnRoaWxsLnJzcw%3D%3D"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233720/original/file-20180827-75978-3mdxcf.png" alt="" width="268" height="68"></a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-conversation/the-anthill"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233716/original/file-20180827-75981-pdp50i.png" alt="Stitcher" width="300" height="88"></a> <a href="https://tunein.com/podcasts/Technology-Podcasts/The-Anthill-p877873/"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233723/original/file-20180827-75984-f0y2gb.png" alt="Listen on TuneIn" width="318" height="125"></a></p>
<p><a href="https://radiopublic.com/the-anthill-GOJ1vz"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-152" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233717/original/file-20180827-75990-86y5tg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=268&fit=clip" alt="Listen on RadioPublic" width="268" height="87"></a> <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/265Bnp4BgwaEmFv2QciIOC?si=-WMr1ecDTsO_6avrkxZu8g"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237984/original/file-20180925-149976-1ks72uy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=268&fit=clip" width="268" height="82"></a> </p>
<hr>
<p><strong><em>Credits:</em></strong></p>
<p><em>Thank you to City, University of London’s Department of Journalism for letting us use their studios to record The Anthill.</em> </p>
<p><em>Picture source: <a href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/flowers-red-poppies-blossom-on-wild-652631032">Shutterstock, A_Lesik</a></em></p>
<p><em>YouTube: British Army, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDS3TxtGaQ0">The Last Post for Remembrance</a></em> </p>
<p><em><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qB4cdRgIcB8&t=14s">Channel 4 Dulce Et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen: Read by Christopher Eccleston</a></em></p>
<p><em>Church bells by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T36p5Z8tWcg">Hereford District</a>.</em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpKmLcxvxVs&t=31s">The Lads of Quintinshill, 1915</a> by Thoren Ferguson</em></p>
<p><em>Armistice by Thoren Ferguson, courtesy of Neil McLennan and Paul Ferguson.</em></p>
<p><em>Free Music Archive: David Hilowitz, <a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/David_Hilowitz/Time_Passing_I/David_Hilowitz_-_Film_Cue_103_-_Time_Passing_I">Time Passing I</a></em> </p>
<p><em>The Anthill theme music is by Alex Grey for Melody Loops</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/106498/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
A podcast on World War I – from a meeting between the three great war poets, to what happened to conscientious objectors in both Britain and Germany.
Annabel Bligh, Business & Economy Editor and Podcast Producer, The Conversation UK
Gemma Ware, Head of Audio
Jane Wright, Commissioning Editor, Arts & Culture, The Conversation UK
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/102831
2018-11-04T13:54:07Z
2018-11-04T13:54:07Z
Memorials give us the chance to sit and think about the First World War
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240678/original/file-20181015-165888-1yan997.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Memorial bench at the University of Saskatchewan.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bill Waiser</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On Nov. 8, 2018, just days before the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War, known as the Great War, the University of Saskatchewan will be dedicating a memorial bench on the university campus.</p>
<p>The bench installation will cap four years of activities initiated and sponsored by a university <a href="http://greatwar.usask.ca/node/85">Great War Commemoration Committee (GWCC)</a>. But once the anniversary of the end of the war comes and goes, will the bench become just another artefact?</p>
<p>One hundred years ago, the University of Saskatchewan decided to recognize service in the war while the conflict was still underway. In 1916, the board of governors recommended that the names of all students, faculty and staff who enlisted <a href="https://library.usask.ca/archives/campus-history/world-war-i.php">be painted on ribbons</a> along the corridors of the first and second floors of <a href="https://www.historicplaces.ca/en/rep-reg/place-lieu.aspx?id=3099">The College Building</a>.</p>
<p>These ribbons were part of the original building fabric and predated the war. But they proved ideal for acknowledging the participation of nearly 300 people, mostly students, including future prime minister <a href="https://library.usask.ca/archives/campus-history/world-war-i.php?idno=53&field=&search=">John Diefenbaker</a>.</p>
<p>These individuals were given a place of honour at the University of Saskatchewan. But no explanation was ever offered as to why the names were there, and their significance was often not apparent to anyone visiting the building.</p>
<p>This omission was corrected with new signage at a re-dedication ceremony in August 2014, along with the addition of the names of those individuals who were missed during the original commemoration process.</p>
<h2>Re-visiting war’s impact</h2>
<p>Unlike other universities, Saskatchewan decided not just to mark the anniversary of the beginning of the war, but to re-visit and examine the impact of the war on the university and Saskatoon and the contribution of the university to the war effort.</p>
<p>The GWCC comprised a broad representative committee of students, faculty, staff, administrators, alumni and retirees, who took on the work. </p>
<p>The university hosted an Indigenous roundtable at which First Nations and Métis peoples were invited to share their memories of the war and what it meant to their home communities.</p>
<p>The only wrinkle was finding a place for the pipe ceremony, a sacred prayer, to set the right tone before the event.</p>
<p>There was also an antiques road show at which families brought in their Great War memorabilia, as if they were sacred treasures, to be assessed by experts in the field.</p>
<p>A series of lectures examined particular aspects of the war — with the emphasis on Saskatchewan’s involvement.</p>
<p>One of the speakers was <em>Globe and Mail</em> editorial artist and Saskatchewan graduate Brian Gable who spoke about cartooning during the First World War.</p>
<h2>An online memorial</h2>
<p>The GWCC also organized off-campus events.</p>
<p>Saskatoon’s Woodlawn Cemetery has a next-of-kin memorial lane, the only surviving one in Canada. With the support of the Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire, families were encouraged to purchase an elm tree for their loved ones as both a personal and community memorial.</p>
<p>When the site was dedicated in 1923, 112 trees had been planted along the main road into the cemetery — to replicate France’s tree-lined avenues. The president of the Saskatoon Heritage Society led a walking tour of the site as part of the university’s commemorative program.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.spsd.sk.ca/school/nutana/About/Pages/default.aspx">Nutana Collegiate, Saskatoon’s first public high school</a>, also served as the venue for a special event. At the end of the war, the student body raised enough funds to commission paintings by some of Canada’s leading artists in memory of those who were lost during the war.</p>
<p>But there was a catch: the paintings were not to depict a war scene. Today, the paintings, worth several million dollars, hang in the school library. When a commemorative program was held there — to tell the story behind the paintings and seek funds for their restoration — the crowd, many of them alumni, filled the library and spilled out into the hall.</p>
<p>Recordings of these events have been deposited at the university archives as part of an <a href="http://reatwar.usask.ca">ambitious online project</a> to make publicly available the great wealth of university holdings related to the war.</p>
<h2>The bench</h2>
<p>The committee is now winding up its activities with the installation of a memorial bench, carved by a local stonemason. The dates, 1914-1918, and the words, “remember us” (the us also standing for the University of Saskatchewan) are inscribed along the back of the bench. </p>
<p>Between them is the silhouette of soldier, head bowed, standing in repose. The figure has historic significance; it was used in the student newspaper, <em>The Sheaf</em>, after the war.</p>
<p>The bench will join other campus memorials to the war and will be placed in the quad immediately north of the Memorial Union Building (commemorating the Second World War) and near the original student residences.</p>
<p>In 1928, the university dedicated memorial gates at the original campus entrance. The names of 67 war dead are engraved on a tablet there. There is also a memorial stone with a plaque dedicated to Saskatchewan men who served in the 46th Battalion. It was known as the suicide battalion because of its incredibly high casualty rate.</p>
<p>The question, though, is whether these memorials, including the new bench, will continue to resonate with the university population and the wider Saskatoon community once the centennial of the end of the war is marked.</p>
<p>They certainly have a place of prominence. Hundreds of people pass them everyday on their way about campus. But do these people ever pause to reflect on the meaning of these memorials and remember the commitment made a century ago to never forget?</p>
<p>As the relative of a soldier — a great uncle — memorialized on the Vimy Monument, I’ve visited the First World War battlefields. I’ve looked out upon a sea of maple leaf headstones in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemeteries in France and Belgium. </p>
<p>I’ve read the rows of names lining the inside walls of cemeteries — those with no known grave but believed to have died nearby. And I’ve attended the Menin Gate “last post” ceremony, held every evening in Ypres regardless of the weather.</p>
<p>This experience has made remembrance all the more meaningful, all the more necessary. It’s not something that should be limited to one day a year.</p>
<p>Just as the First World War demanded increasingly greater sacrifices, Canadians need to be continuously reminded to never forget. That’s the purpose behind the installation of a new memorial bench at U of S.</p>
<p>It is a place for people to take time to sit and think about the service and sacrifice and to remember. What better way to honour their memory?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/102831/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bill Waiser is the chair of the GWCC at the University of Saskatchewan. </span></em></p>
On the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War, the University of Saskatchewan will be dedicating a memorial bench on the university campus.
Bill Waiser, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, History, University of Saskatchewan
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/86885
2017-11-10T10:56:03Z
2017-11-10T10:56:03Z
Why remembrance of Indian soldiers who fought for the British in World War II is so political
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193782/original/file-20171108-14221-23ll6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C194%2C796%2C594&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Indian forces in North Africa during World War II. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> Imperial War Museums © IWM (E 5330) </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>During the Allied invasion of Italy in early September 1943, an Indian lieutenant wrote a letter to his beloved. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Here I am penning this to you in the middle of one of the biggest nights in the history of this war. Love, I am sure by the time you receive this letter you will guess correctly as to where I am. I bet you, you wouldn’t like to stay here a single minute… Oh! it is terrible. Yet in the midst of this commotion, I sit here, on my own kit-bag and scribble these few lines to my love for I do not really know when I will get the next opportunity to write to you.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The lieutenant formed part of the largest volunteer army in the world, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/23/the-raj-war-peoples-history-second-world-war-yasmin-khan-review">2.5m men</a> from undivided India – what is today India, Pakistan and Bangladesh – who served the British during World War II. They were fighting for Britain at a time when the struggle for India’s freedom from British rule was at its most incendiary.</p>
<p>The two world wars will be remembered on November 12 in the UK by two minutes’ of silence, church services and the laying of poppy wreaths. Such commemorative practices are <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/find-out-how-you-can-join-the-commemorations-on-sunday-12-november">directed towards</a> “the contribution of British and Commonwealth military and civilian servicemen and women”. But the use of the term “Commonwealth” glosses over the imperial legacy intertwined in this war effort.</p>
<p>The British memory of World War II, with its <a href="https://www.nationalww2museum.org/students-teachers/student-resources/research-starters/research-starters-worldwide-deaths-world-war">60m dead</a> on all sides, is framed through several broad narratives: personal and familial loss, the battle against fascism and the UK’s refusal to capitulate, and the war’s transformative impact on European geopolitics. But there are rich seams of forgotten stories beyond these Eurocentric points of reference: this was a world war, and experiences under British colonialism and Empire are intricately woven through its fabric. As historian Yasmin Khan has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/23/the-raj-war-peoples-history-second-world-war-yasmin-khan-review">pointed out</a>: “Britain did not fight the Second World War, the British Empire did.” Today’s remembrance services avoid interrogating this colonial past and the range of Indian war experiences that ensued. </p>
<h2>A time of resistance</h2>
<p>Indian participation in the war began with four mule companies being sent off to France to assist the <a href="http://www.britishmilitaryhistory.co.uk/documents.php?aid=24&nid=4&start=0">British Expeditionary Forces</a> in September 1939. The then-viceroy of India, Lord Linlithgow, <a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/apr/17/book-review-inidas-war-world-war-ii-and-the-making/">did not consult</a> the burgeoning Indian political leadership before doing so. This undemocratic inclusion in World War II led to Mahatma Gandhi launching the <a href="http://www.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/makingbritain/content/1942-quit-india-movement">1942 Quit India movement</a> – mass agitations against 200 years of British rule – which was suppressed, in turn, by a brutal use of force, including <a href="http://www.thehindu.com/videos/in-numbers-75-years-of-the-quit-india-movement/article19451392.ece">firing on civilians and public floggings</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193783/original/file-20171108-14167-1e46zpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193783/original/file-20171108-14167-1e46zpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=634&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193783/original/file-20171108-14167-1e46zpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=634&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193783/original/file-20171108-14167-1e46zpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=634&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193783/original/file-20171108-14167-1e46zpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=797&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193783/original/file-20171108-14167-1e46zpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=797&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193783/original/file-20171108-14167-1e46zpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=797&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An Indian soldier guarding an Anglo Iranian Oil Company refinery in Persia in September 1941.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Imperial War Museums - © IWM (E 5330)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1940s India, unlike Britain, conscription was never introduced. Enlisting was therefore voluntary – and new recruits were ostensibly granted the power to choose whether to sign up to go to war. The British Empire, however, needed men urgently, and requirements for entry were considerably relaxed, including <a href="https://www.academia.edu/3010524/State_And_Class_In_India_19391945">the acceptance of underweight and anaemic applicants</a> – those most desperate for a steady income. </p>
<p>Indian responses to the war were wide-ranging and complex, as soldiers’ letters connecting battlefield to the home-front reveal. While many letters were deferential to the British Empire as economic provider, others revealed an awareness of soaring rates of wartime inflation in India, with ordinary people being priced out of food and essential items. </p>
<p>A “havildar clerk” or sergeant from the Royal Indian Army Service Corps wrote back home in May 1943:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Everything has gone high in price in our homeland. They have written that no cloth is available for less than one rupee per yard. We being earning <em>[sic]</em> can pull on somehow or other but the poor have to suffer much. But what can be done? What power have we got to do anything.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The letter, which is kept in the British Library archives which I am researching, highlights the soldier’s psychological despair of being a hapless spectator from an overseas battlefront to hunger and want in his homeland. More than <a href="http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/15-the-prime-minister-and-the-prof">3m people died</a> in the <a href="http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/0198284632.001.0001/acprof-9780198284635-chapter-6">man-made Bengal Famine of 1943</a>, through a combination of starvation and the associated diseases of cholera, diarrhoea and dysentery. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193781/original/file-20171108-14205-18so2xb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193781/original/file-20171108-14205-18so2xb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193781/original/file-20171108-14205-18so2xb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193781/original/file-20171108-14205-18so2xb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193781/original/file-20171108-14205-18so2xb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1158&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193781/original/file-20171108-14205-18so2xb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1158&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193781/original/file-20171108-14205-18so2xb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1158&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Representation of a family struck by the Bengal Famine of by Bangladeshi artist Zoinul Abedin.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© British Museum 2012, 3027.1</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The famine could have been prevented had large-scale exports of food from India not been sent to war theatres and had <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/soutikbiswas/2010/10/how_churchill_starved_india.html">aid arrived in time.</a></p>
<p>World War II also became an opportunity for armed resistance to British rule in India, spearheaded by the charismatic <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674065963">Subhas Chandra Bose</a>. The <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3684288.stm">Indian Legion</a> in Germany and the <a href="https://www.press.umich.edu/12254/forgotten_army">Indian National Army</a> in Japanese-controlled East Asia, formed from prisoners-of-war belonging to the imperial Indian Army and expatriate Indian communities, were persuaded to fight against the British to secure independence. They lost the war, but were hailed <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Forgotten_Army.html?id=ysA8RNT224oC&redir_esc=y">by the Indian public as heroes</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hbKO-C-kZ8A?wmode=transparent&start=17" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>A complex legacy</h2>
<p>The history of Indian participation in World War II has left a difficult, sometimes fraught legacy, both in the UK and the Indian subcontinent. Current UK commemorations do not capture this complexity or encourage us to <a href="https://theconversation.com/official-world-war-i-memorial-rituals-could-create-a-generation-uncritical-of-the-conflict-60384">think critically</a> about established narratives about war. </p>
<p>In India, official remembrance for World War II remains a controversial subject, as it is a reminder of the colonial past, although <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-36801602">efforts are being made</a> to change this lack of public commemoration. In my interviews with survivors and their family members in India, I have found that many have kept remembering the war in private, through old uniforms, battlefield objects, dusty photographs and conversation.</p>
<p>The letters I am studying, too, evoke the varied and personal experiences of colonial troops: homesickness and longing, life in the desert, entertainment provided by mobile Indian cinemas, the joys of eating a <em>bada khana</em> (enormous feast) and the annoying lack of cigarettes. These words document the immediacy of their war experience. More than silences and wreaths, they bring forgotten Indian soldiers back into the narrative of World War II and deepen our understanding of a global history of terrible violence.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86885/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Diya Gupta receives funding from the charity "British Federation of Women Graduates' for her final-year PhD research work. She is a student member of the Labour Party.</span></em></p>
Letters home reveal what is was like to be an Indian soldier in World War II.
Diya Gupta, PhD Researcher, Department of English, King's College London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/86768
2017-11-10T01:52:29Z
2017-11-10T01:52:29Z
Flowers, remembrance and the art of war
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194106/original/file-20171110-13296-gy6opb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Poppies at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/canberra-australia-march-18-2017-poppy-613609064">katatrix/shuttershock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Before 1914, flowers in everyday life spelt beauty, femininity and innocence; they were seen as part of women’s culture. But during the first world war, that changed. Men gathered posies of flowers on battlefields and dried them in honour of the dead, they turned to wild flowers as motifs for paintings and photographs, and they recognised in blue cornflowers and red poppies the fragility of life.</p>
<p>Historian Paul Fussell referred to the red poppy, <em>Papaver rhoeas</em>, as “an indispensable part of the symbolism” of WWI. When, on November 11, those who fought and died in WWI are commemorated, the sanguine colour of the red poppy, a flower that grew in profusion on Flanders Fields, is a vivid reminder to the living of the cost of sacrifice in war.</p>
<p>At the end of the conflict, artificial replicas of the Flanders poppy were sold in Allied countries to be worn in honour of the dead. Their resistance to decay became an embodiment of everlasting memory. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194084/original/file-20171109-13329-1x6k3gr.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194084/original/file-20171109-13329-1x6k3gr.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194084/original/file-20171109-13329-1x6k3gr.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194084/original/file-20171109-13329-1x6k3gr.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194084/original/file-20171109-13329-1x6k3gr.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194084/original/file-20171109-13329-1x6k3gr.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194084/original/file-20171109-13329-1x6k3gr.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Artificial poppies left at the Waitati cenotaph in New Zealand (2009). The white poppy is used as a symbol of peace.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anzac_poppies.JPG">Nankai/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, the red poppy was not always adopted without criticism. After 1933, in opposition to the symbolism of it, peace ceremonies appropriated the <a href="http://www.ppu.org.uk/whitepoppy/index.html">white poppy</a>. Each flower expresses a different view on war: red embodies commemoration of sacrifice; white opposes political violence and remembers all war victims. </p>
<p>As living forms, as art, and as symbols, the wildflowers that soldiers encountered in WWI Europe help us negotiate the unimaginable enormity of war and deepen the solemnity of remembrance. </p>
<h2>‘We are the dead’</h2>
<p>Among the most affecting, but least talked about, Australian war paintings that officially commemorate and remember the fallen soldiers of the First World War, is George Lambert’s <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C176421">Gallipoli Wild Flowers</a> (1919). Painted while Lambert served as Official War Artist, the work is unusual for the absence of soldiers’ bodies shown in action or in death. Yet it alludes to both by the inclusion of an empty slouch hat and a cluster of battlefield wildflowers. At the centre of the array of blossoms is the Flanders poppy. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194068/original/file-20171109-13311-aljxpg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194068/original/file-20171109-13311-aljxpg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194068/original/file-20171109-13311-aljxpg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194068/original/file-20171109-13311-aljxpg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194068/original/file-20171109-13311-aljxpg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194068/original/file-20171109-13311-aljxpg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=607&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194068/original/file-20171109-13311-aljxpg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=607&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194068/original/file-20171109-13311-aljxpg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=607&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">George Lambert, ‘Gallipoli wild flowers’, oil (1919).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C176421">ART02838/Courtesy of the Australian War Memorial</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The painting is a floral still-life. It exudes the melancholy of life stilled, and challenges popular conceptions that flowers are feminine, passive and beautiful. If the flowers in Lambert’s painting are beautiful, it is beauty tempered by the knowledge of human suffering. And they break with convention by relating to men, not women. </p>
<p>The dark centres of the poppies stare at us like the eyes of men who fought at Gallipoli. The message they communicate is the same one relayed by poppies in the lines of John McCrae’s mournful poem <a href="https://www.army.gov.au/our-history/traditions/in-flanders-fields">In Flanders Fields</a> (1915): “we are the dead”.</p>
<p>Other Australian artists deployed by the Australian War Memorial tried to render the same power, and the same symbolisms, as George Lambert’s wildflower still-life, although with less intensity. Will Longstaff, for example, painted <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C172234">Menin Gate at midnight</a> (1927), a monumental commemoration to men who were buried in unmarked graves on the Western Front in which the ghosts of the dead rise up among blood red poppies that grow in the same soil where their bodies decayed. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194070/original/file-20171109-13323-d1v46s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194070/original/file-20171109-13323-d1v46s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194070/original/file-20171109-13323-d1v46s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=317&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194070/original/file-20171109-13323-d1v46s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=317&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194070/original/file-20171109-13323-d1v46s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=317&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194070/original/file-20171109-13323-d1v46s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194070/original/file-20171109-13323-d1v46s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194070/original/file-20171109-13323-d1v46s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Will Longstaff, ‘Menin Gate at midnight’, oil on canvas (1927).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C172234">ART09807/Courtesy of the Australian War Memorial</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Flowers and the battlefield</h2>
<p>On churned up war landscapes, masses of wildflowers covered <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/index.php/collection/C351426">derelict tanks</a> and blanketed the ground where the dead lay, juxtaposing cold metal and the destructive power of men with the organic growth and regenerative power of nature.</p>
<p>Such contrasts presented Frank Hurley, Australia’s Official War Photographer working in Flanders and Palestine from August to November 1917, with many of the war’s most powerful images. Hurley could not ignore the cruel irony of all that fragile beauty growing free in the midst of industrialised warfare, mass killing, and the corpses of the dead. </p>
<p>Hurley’s <a href="http://www.greatwar.nl/kleur/anemones.html">Lighthorseman gathering poppies, Palestine</a> (1918) is a rare colour photograph from the period. Hurley well understood the power of the poppy. He knew that for the image to become a national icon of comradeship, the flowers had to be coloured red because it is the poppy’s redness that made it the <a href="https://anzacday.org.au/the-poppy-is-for-sacrifice">official symbol</a> of sacrifice. Yet Hurley’s photo is pastoral, and in its vision of ideal life suggests the antithesis of war.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194074/original/file-20171109-13296-93tgbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194074/original/file-20171109-13296-93tgbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194074/original/file-20171109-13296-93tgbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194074/original/file-20171109-13296-93tgbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194074/original/file-20171109-13296-93tgbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194074/original/file-20171109-13296-93tgbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194074/original/file-20171109-13296-93tgbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194074/original/file-20171109-13296-93tgbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Frank Hurley, Australian lighthorseman gathering poppies, colour photograph (c1918).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C979439">PO3631.046/Courtesy of the Australian War Memorial</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It may also be that flowers have a particular power over our perception. <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2928665?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">Elaine Scarry</a> argues that the high colouration of a flower’s face is more perfect for imagining and storing images to memory than the faces of people. Official and unofficial WWI records lend support to Scarry’s theory. </p>
<p>When <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/LIB34556">Cecil Malthus</a>, a New Zealand soldier at Gallipoli in 1915, found himself under attack, it was not the faces of the soldiers around him that he remembered, but the faces of self-sown poppies and daisies on the ground.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86768/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ann Elias does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The wildflowers that WWI soldiers encountered in Europe become symbols of remembrance and the fragility of life. The red poppy in particular is a powerful motif in Australian war art and photography.
Ann Elias, Associate Professor, Department of Art History, University of Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/87004
2017-11-09T19:20:52Z
2017-11-09T19:20:52Z
Why children need to be taught to think critically about Remembrance Day
<p>A few years ago, my then four-year-old daughter came home from preschool wanting to know who the soldiers were and why they died.</p>
<p>As a history teacher for nearly two decades, I thought I had it covered. This was my moment to shine as a parent and educator. Unfortunately, I had grossly overestimated my capabilities. I found myself stumbling over explanations and unable to find the words. Anyone who has tried knows it’s nearly impossible to describe to a four-year-old the machinations of war in a non-terrifying way. How would I unpack the complex cultural participation in commemorations? I resorted to telling her: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’ll explain it when you’re older. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>I know, I know, shame on me. </p>
<p>But it got me thinking about how we position our students to engage meaningfully with wartime narratives and commemorations. I think we’re missing valuable opportunities to teach students how to critically evaluate memorialisation as a historical artefact. This deserves our attention because artefacts embody the ideological value systems of the community that create it and the society that, 100 years later, continues to use and observe it. In critiquing Remembrance Day, students will likely learn a great deal about the social and political customs of their own community. </p>
<h2>How do schools now participate in commemoration?</h2>
<p>What happens now is fairly straightforward. Schools will consult a website such as the <a href="http://anzacportal.dva.gov.au/">Australian Government Department of Veterans’ Affairs</a> to find a <a href="http://anzacportal.dva.gov.au/conduct-event">runsheet</a>. Students will be organised to speak, taking heed of the advice for the commemorative address to “<a href="http://anzacportal.dva.gov.au/conduct-event">highlight the service and sacrifice of men and women in all conflicts</a>”. A wreath may be purchased, a minute’s silence will be observed, and a recording of <a href="https://www.army.gov.au/our-history/traditions/the-last-post">The Last Post</a> and <a href="https://www.army.gov.au/our-history/traditions/the-rouse-and-the-reveille">The Rouse and the Reveille</a> will be played. </p>
<p>The concern is that uncritical engagement in the social act of commemoration is creating generations of historical tourists. These “tourists” are not enabled to understand that memorials and commemorative services are interpretations of the past, or that such services are a representation of how present-day society believes it should interact with that past. They simply pass through without understanding the full context. Asking pupils to organise and participate in a commemorative event, or providing red paper to make poppies, will not help students develop capacity to recognise that memorial sites and the framing of historical narratives are responses to the context of the time they were created. </p>
<h2>Why is this important?</h2>
<p>Memorials and commemorative services use rhetoric that speaks to national identities. Political leaders are adept at using these monuments, ceremonies and rhetoric to respond to current social anxieties in a way that often creates further divisions.</p>
<p>As historical tourists attending commemorative services, students (and the adults they grow into) are at risk of accepting without question nationalistic and political agendas that may not be in their best interests. I want my students and pre-service teachers to recognise the political, social, and economic factors that influence how a society conducts and participates in memorialisation of the past. Recognising and understanding this influence leads to active and proactive citizenship.</p>
<h2>Preparing our students</h2>
<p>How can teachers best prepare primary and secondary school students to think critically about memorialisation? Here is some sound advice from around the globe.</p>
<p><a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11125-010-9140-z">Monique Eckmann</a> from the <a href="https://www.hes-so.ch/en/homepage-hes-so-1679.html">University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland</a> says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the history of memory has to be studied; it is important to understand the context and the history of the decision to create a memorial or a commemoration day. Which advocacy groups took the initiative to propose a memorial place or a commemorative date, when, and for whom? What groups were involved in memorialisation politics? What victims are named, who is mentioned in the official memory, and who is not included in it?</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3200/TSSS.98.3.105-110">Alan S. Marcus</a>, assistant professor of curriculum and instruction at the <a href="https://education.uconn.edu/">Neag School of Education</a> at the University of Connecticut suggests: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>providing students with or asking them to research the public and private purposes and missions of the memorial, and asking students to discuss how they may influence what is displayed,</p></li>
<li><p>asking students to interview other visitors at the memorial to learn about their experiences and how those visitors understand the monument and the commemorative services conducted there.</p></li>
</ul>
<p><a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/43259416">Barnaby Nemko</a>, Head of History at <a href="http://www.sthelens.london/">St Helen’s School</a> in Northwood, London, set his students the task of producing their own photographic memorial of the first world war, which would serve as a record for future generations. The aim was for pupils to construct their own First World War photo memorial based on what they experienced on their day trip to the site of <a href="http://www.greatwar.co.uk/ypres-salient/battles-ypres-salient.htm">Ypres</a>. Subsequently, the pupils would have to justify their choice of “exhibits”. </p>
<p>As a history teacher, I see great value in all these strategies. So I was surprised by the results of <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/43259416">Nemko’s</a> study. The work his students produced displayed a complete lack of understanding that the photographic memorial they created was indeed an interpretation of the past. He found that the historical monuments elicited such a strong emotional reaction from the students that it impaired their analytical skills, which were otherwise well developed in relation to other kinds of historical accounts.</p>
<h2>What about the place of commemoration in pre-school?</h2>
<p>My second child attends a different preschool. Fortunately, there are no commemorative activities offered at this centre. I am more than a little relieved. I avoid stumbling again through the murky waters of attempting to explain war and remembrance to a child under the age of five. More importantly, I just don’t think she’s ready to engage in the horrors of war and the complexities of how societies construct narratives to memorialise such events.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87004/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kim Wilson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Teaching students to recognise and understanding the political, social, and economic factors that influence how we celebrate Remembrance Day would make them more active citizens.
Kim Wilson, Lecturer in History Education, Macquarie University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/68633
2016-11-11T14:02:40Z
2016-11-11T14:02:40Z
On the day when all eyes are on them, does anyone ask how veterans see themselves?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/145564/original/image-20161111-15727-8nbqrr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Veterans see something very different to the medals, uniforms and poppies of Remembrance Day.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">FACT</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Armed forces’ veterans occupy a unique position in a nation’s imagination, and at this time of year in Europe especially those images are fresh in our mind with the arrival of Remembrance Day. But the symbol of the poppy <a href="https://theconversation.com/poppies-are-a-political-symbol-both-on-and-off-the-football-pitch-68113">has tended to divide as much as unite</a>, as people find themselves torn between feeling respect toward those who have served without wishing to support war.</p>
<p>Remembrance is an aesthetic, recognisable through its uniformed choreography that resounds loudly in the public imagination even as the country falls silent. Debates often start with the meanings attached to nationalism and heroism, prompting debaters to support or resist this tradition – rather than questioning the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-should-we-teach-remembrance-at-school-33818">current function of commemorations</a> in the first place. But despite this debate about their efforts and the institution they represent, the one perspective that is rarely considered is that of the veterans themselves.</p>
<p>With civil-military relations increasingly visible after a decade of wars, remembrance connects the past, present and future – merging past and current conflicts into a single act of remembrance, while enshrining the sacrifice of wars yet to be fought. Armed forces personnel past and present, young and old come to represent our public memories of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/ng-interactive/2014/feb/11/britain-100-years-of-conflict">a hundred years of war</a>.</p>
<p>Leaving aside the evident political problems of bringing together all historical wars and so conflating their very different origins and causes, the story of the veteran is much more complex and contradictory today than in years past, and their experience of being a veteran – should anyone think to ask them – is not the same.</p>
<h2>Remembering them</h2>
<p>On reintegrating into society, veterans can experience homelessness, mental health issues, alcoholism – and they might find themselves in the criminal justice system. For these men and women it can be difficult to identify with the traditional imagery of remembrance: it is hard to connect with a nation that you feel has forgotten you. The symbolism of Remembrance Day doesn’t just divide us watching from the outside, it also <a href="http://www.fact.co.uk/projects/veterans-in-practice/remembered.aspx">sows division among those who have served</a>.</p>
<p>Veterans in the criminal justice system often talk of an “identity crisis”, in part brought on by the binaries of “good and bad” and “us and them” that are an essential mindset for warfare. As they reflect on the time they dedicated their lives to protecting the nation and how now, through incarceration, <a href="https://www.ljmu.ac.uk/microsites/reimagining-conflict-pedagogy-policy-and-arts-group/projects">the nation is protected from them</a>, many have asked me: can I still be a veteran?</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dO99PQyrcGQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>There has been an effort to counter predictable and shallow representations of veterans, particularly in the US. For example, Craig F Walker’s <a href="http://www.pulitzer.org/winners/craig-f-walker-0">Pulitzer Prize-winning</a> photo essay for the Denver Post showing veterans out of uniform and often struggling to cope. They stand in stark contrast to the traditional view of them as uniformed and bemedalled.</p>
<p>This isn’t a call to discount or discredit the processions and ceremonies that take place – nor to replace them with images of how veterans suffer. It should not be a case of either/or, but rather to add 1,000 different faces from 100 different places to inject some reality into the ritual and to provide a space where veterans can reimagine themselves, as individuals.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jWdzMBLaY5c?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>Do I look like a veteran to you?</h2>
<p>Our <a href="https://www.ljmu.ac.uk/microsites/reimagining-conflict-pedagogy-policy-and-arts-group/projects">Reimagine the Veteran</a> is comprised of academics from a range of disciplines working with artists from the <a href="http://www.fact.co.uk/projects/veterans-in-practice.aspx">Foundation for Creative Technology</a>. Taking stock of these individual accounts from veterans, the project provides a platform for them to reimagine themselves, going beyond gathering alternative stories or images showing veterans as marginalised, to place veterans at the centre of the project. They themselves participate in a process of reimagining and reconstructing themselves. </p>
<p>For example, in “Do I look like a veteran to you?”, our veterans used green screen technology to assemble composite images of themselves that they felt made more sense of their lives than the images presented at memorial parades. We were surprised to find that they were keen not to recreate or revisit traumatic or sensational imagery. The banal and mundane experiences were key: images included veterans dressed in jeans to represent the everyday, and a horse running the wrong way at the Grand National to suggest feeling lost or directionless. Other projects unearthed how traumatic feelings could be triggered by something as simple as the smell of food, or the way the sounds from cars on the road can remind a veteran of helicopters.</p>
<p>War has not only defined the 21st century but has been captured and recorded in ways that were previously impossible. War zones are now visible on television or online and the effects on those involved are much more immediately apparent. Veterans’ experiences have often been mediated through politicians, the media, academics, or charities. This project has given the veterans the opportunity to speak for themselves.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68633/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emma Murray is affiliated with the Foundation for Creative Technology (FACT), Liverpool. </span></em></p>
All eyes are on ex-forces veterans come Remembrance Day. We may see heroes – but no one asks them whether they want to fit that mould.
Emma Murray, Senior Lecturer in Criminal Justice, Liverpool John Moores University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/67835
2016-11-10T19:15:14Z
2016-11-10T19:15:14Z
Friday essay: Camarade – The Earth
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143596/original/image-20161027-11247-1j5z9fp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A road sign in the Granite Belt, in Queensland.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Louise Grayson</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>This year, as World War One centenary commemorations continue, attention has swung from Gallipoli to France and Belgium. Vast numbers of Commonwealth visitors have arrived in the villages that bore the brunt of the Western Front battles. </p>
<p>My photographic essay Camarade: The Earth juxtaposes photographs taken on the battlefields of the Western Front and in Queensland’s Granite Belt, where more than 500 Diggers were “resettled” after the war. </p>
<p>Forty six thousand Australians died on the Western Front and more than 150,000 were wounded. They died in the Battles of Pozieres, Bullecourt, Messines and Passchendaele. </p>
<p>After the war ended, the earth in Northern France and Belgium was littered with remnants of the battles. Millions of bodies were buried in the local farmers’ fields. Children grew up with warnings about the shrapnel that still remains underground.</p>
<p>Many Australian diggers came home to rebuild their lives in resettlement communities such as the Pikedale Soldier Settlement Scheme on the Granite Belt in southern Queensland. They paid £625 to purchase and run their farming block. They named the new settlement – its suburbs and train stations – after the places where they’d fought on the Western Front. </p>
<p>On the Amiens Branch Railway line that ran from Cottonvale to the terminus at Amiens, almost 20 km away, six railway sidings were named after memorable battlefields where men from the area died and are buried: Fleurbaix, Pozieres, Bullecourt, Passchendaele, Bapaume, and Messines. </p>
<p>Here, in Queensland, the returned soldiers had to fight the large granite boulders on the land they were given. They began a new battle, with the earth, to scrape a living out of cleared bushland. </p>
<p>Today, families continue to experience challenges in digging out a life from the land on both sides of the world. As it becomes harder to make a living from traditional farming, new industries, such as battlefield tourism and wineries, have flourished.</p>
<p>On the Western Front, poppies still grow by the sides of roads and in fields where the dead lie. In commemorating the war’s centenary, we seek to halt the erosion of memory.
</p>
<hr>
<p><br>
<br></p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143571/original/image-20161027-11260-15tvrf2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143571/original/image-20161027-11260-15tvrf2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143571/original/image-20161027-11260-15tvrf2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143571/original/image-20161027-11260-15tvrf2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143571/original/image-20161027-11260-15tvrf2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143571/original/image-20161027-11260-15tvrf2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143571/original/image-20161027-11260-15tvrf2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143571/original/image-20161027-11260-15tvrf2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Western Front.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Louise Grayson</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><br></p>
<h2><br></h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143586/original/image-20161027-11275-1qo2peu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143586/original/image-20161027-11275-1qo2peu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143586/original/image-20161027-11275-1qo2peu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143586/original/image-20161027-11275-1qo2peu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143586/original/image-20161027-11275-1qo2peu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143586/original/image-20161027-11275-1qo2peu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143586/original/image-20161027-11275-1qo2peu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143586/original/image-20161027-11275-1qo2peu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Western Front.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Louise Grayson</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143584/original/image-20161027-11247-15h76xv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143584/original/image-20161027-11247-15h76xv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143584/original/image-20161027-11247-15h76xv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143584/original/image-20161027-11247-15h76xv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143584/original/image-20161027-11247-15h76xv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143584/original/image-20161027-11247-15h76xv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143584/original/image-20161027-11247-15h76xv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143584/original/image-20161027-11247-15h76xv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Granite Belt.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Louise Grayson</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><br></p>
<h2><br></h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143578/original/image-20161027-11278-1yzheek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143578/original/image-20161027-11278-1yzheek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143578/original/image-20161027-11278-1yzheek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143578/original/image-20161027-11278-1yzheek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143578/original/image-20161027-11278-1yzheek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143578/original/image-20161027-11278-1yzheek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143578/original/image-20161027-11278-1yzheek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143578/original/image-20161027-11278-1yzheek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Western Front.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Louise Grayson</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143573/original/image-20161027-11268-wzwxgo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143573/original/image-20161027-11268-wzwxgo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143573/original/image-20161027-11268-wzwxgo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143573/original/image-20161027-11268-wzwxgo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143573/original/image-20161027-11268-wzwxgo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143573/original/image-20161027-11268-wzwxgo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143573/original/image-20161027-11268-wzwxgo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143573/original/image-20161027-11268-wzwxgo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Granite Belt.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Louise Grayson</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><br></p>
<h2><br></h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143572/original/image-20161027-11247-dho9zk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143572/original/image-20161027-11247-dho9zk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143572/original/image-20161027-11247-dho9zk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143572/original/image-20161027-11247-dho9zk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143572/original/image-20161027-11247-dho9zk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143572/original/image-20161027-11247-dho9zk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143572/original/image-20161027-11247-dho9zk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143572/original/image-20161027-11247-dho9zk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Western Front.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Louise Grayson</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143575/original/image-20161027-11247-1fbbsz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143575/original/image-20161027-11247-1fbbsz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143575/original/image-20161027-11247-1fbbsz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143575/original/image-20161027-11247-1fbbsz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143575/original/image-20161027-11247-1fbbsz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143575/original/image-20161027-11247-1fbbsz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143575/original/image-20161027-11247-1fbbsz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143575/original/image-20161027-11247-1fbbsz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Granite Belt.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Louise Grayson</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><br></p>
<h2><br></h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143594/original/image-20161027-11265-1861v0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143594/original/image-20161027-11265-1861v0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143594/original/image-20161027-11265-1861v0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143594/original/image-20161027-11265-1861v0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143594/original/image-20161027-11265-1861v0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143594/original/image-20161027-11265-1861v0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143594/original/image-20161027-11265-1861v0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143594/original/image-20161027-11265-1861v0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Western Front.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Louise Grayson</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143570/original/image-20161027-11239-ncr4v9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143570/original/image-20161027-11239-ncr4v9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143570/original/image-20161027-11239-ncr4v9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143570/original/image-20161027-11239-ncr4v9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143570/original/image-20161027-11239-ncr4v9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143570/original/image-20161027-11239-ncr4v9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143570/original/image-20161027-11239-ncr4v9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143570/original/image-20161027-11239-ncr4v9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Granite Belt.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Louise Grayson</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><br></p>
<h2><br></h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143569/original/image-20161027-11268-1egbyhw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143569/original/image-20161027-11268-1egbyhw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143569/original/image-20161027-11268-1egbyhw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143569/original/image-20161027-11268-1egbyhw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143569/original/image-20161027-11268-1egbyhw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143569/original/image-20161027-11268-1egbyhw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143569/original/image-20161027-11268-1egbyhw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143569/original/image-20161027-11268-1egbyhw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Western Front.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Louise Grayson</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143568/original/image-20161027-32322-18mjd2u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143568/original/image-20161027-32322-18mjd2u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143568/original/image-20161027-32322-18mjd2u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143568/original/image-20161027-32322-18mjd2u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143568/original/image-20161027-32322-18mjd2u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143568/original/image-20161027-32322-18mjd2u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143568/original/image-20161027-32322-18mjd2u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143568/original/image-20161027-32322-18mjd2u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Granite Belt.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Louise Grayson</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><br></p>
<h2><br></h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143580/original/image-20161027-11271-1fy73ei.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143580/original/image-20161027-11271-1fy73ei.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143580/original/image-20161027-11271-1fy73ei.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143580/original/image-20161027-11271-1fy73ei.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143580/original/image-20161027-11271-1fy73ei.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143580/original/image-20161027-11271-1fy73ei.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143580/original/image-20161027-11271-1fy73ei.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143580/original/image-20161027-11271-1fy73ei.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Western Front.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Louise Grayson</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143582/original/image-20161027-32322-gjstvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143582/original/image-20161027-32322-gjstvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143582/original/image-20161027-32322-gjstvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143582/original/image-20161027-32322-gjstvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143582/original/image-20161027-32322-gjstvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143582/original/image-20161027-32322-gjstvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143582/original/image-20161027-32322-gjstvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143582/original/image-20161027-32322-gjstvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Granite Belt.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Louise Grayson</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><br></p>
<h2><br></h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143587/original/image-20161027-11271-qmijhp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143587/original/image-20161027-11271-qmijhp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143587/original/image-20161027-11271-qmijhp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143587/original/image-20161027-11271-qmijhp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143587/original/image-20161027-11271-qmijhp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143587/original/image-20161027-11271-qmijhp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143587/original/image-20161027-11271-qmijhp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143587/original/image-20161027-11271-qmijhp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Western Front.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Louise Grayson</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143579/original/image-20161027-11268-1g1ym8h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143579/original/image-20161027-11268-1g1ym8h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143579/original/image-20161027-11268-1g1ym8h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143579/original/image-20161027-11268-1g1ym8h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143579/original/image-20161027-11268-1g1ym8h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143579/original/image-20161027-11268-1g1ym8h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143579/original/image-20161027-11268-1g1ym8h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143579/original/image-20161027-11268-1g1ym8h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Granite Belt.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Louise Grayson</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><br></p>
<h2><br></h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143577/original/image-20161027-11260-1ym2ljk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143577/original/image-20161027-11260-1ym2ljk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143577/original/image-20161027-11260-1ym2ljk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143577/original/image-20161027-11260-1ym2ljk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143577/original/image-20161027-11260-1ym2ljk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143577/original/image-20161027-11260-1ym2ljk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143577/original/image-20161027-11260-1ym2ljk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143577/original/image-20161027-11260-1ym2ljk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Western Front.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Louise Grayson</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143589/original/image-20161027-11252-wm6pzp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143589/original/image-20161027-11252-wm6pzp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143589/original/image-20161027-11252-wm6pzp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143589/original/image-20161027-11252-wm6pzp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143589/original/image-20161027-11252-wm6pzp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143589/original/image-20161027-11252-wm6pzp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143589/original/image-20161027-11252-wm6pzp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143589/original/image-20161027-11252-wm6pzp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Granite Belt.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Louise Grayson</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><br></p>
<h2><br></h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143576/original/image-20161027-11278-dxpenh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143576/original/image-20161027-11278-dxpenh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143576/original/image-20161027-11278-dxpenh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143576/original/image-20161027-11278-dxpenh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143576/original/image-20161027-11278-dxpenh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143576/original/image-20161027-11278-dxpenh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143576/original/image-20161027-11278-dxpenh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143576/original/image-20161027-11278-dxpenh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Western Front.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Louise Grayson</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143581/original/image-20161027-11239-o2912c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143581/original/image-20161027-11239-o2912c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143581/original/image-20161027-11239-o2912c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143581/original/image-20161027-11239-o2912c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143581/original/image-20161027-11239-o2912c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143581/original/image-20161027-11239-o2912c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143581/original/image-20161027-11239-o2912c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143581/original/image-20161027-11239-o2912c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Granite Belt.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Louise Grayson</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><br></p>
<h2><br></h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143595/original/image-20161027-11278-7zcj3u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143595/original/image-20161027-11278-7zcj3u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143595/original/image-20161027-11278-7zcj3u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143595/original/image-20161027-11278-7zcj3u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143595/original/image-20161027-11278-7zcj3u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143595/original/image-20161027-11278-7zcj3u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143595/original/image-20161027-11278-7zcj3u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143595/original/image-20161027-11278-7zcj3u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Western Front.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Louise Grayson</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143583/original/image-20161027-11260-qhjhur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143583/original/image-20161027-11260-qhjhur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143583/original/image-20161027-11260-qhjhur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143583/original/image-20161027-11260-qhjhur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143583/original/image-20161027-11260-qhjhur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143583/original/image-20161027-11260-qhjhur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143583/original/image-20161027-11260-qhjhur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143583/original/image-20161027-11260-qhjhur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Granite Belt.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Louise Grayson</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><br></p>
<h2><br></h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143590/original/image-20161027-11268-1vo33ru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143590/original/image-20161027-11268-1vo33ru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143590/original/image-20161027-11268-1vo33ru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143590/original/image-20161027-11268-1vo33ru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143590/original/image-20161027-11268-1vo33ru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143590/original/image-20161027-11268-1vo33ru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143590/original/image-20161027-11268-1vo33ru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143590/original/image-20161027-11268-1vo33ru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Western Front, Europe.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Louise Grayson</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67835/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Louise Grayson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Forty six thousand Australians died on the Western Front. After WWI, diggers were resettled in Queensland’s Granite Belt, where suburbs were named after battle sites. Our photo essay explores these poignant places today.
Louise Grayson, Lecturer in Journalism, Media & Communication, Queensland University of Technology
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/65560
2016-11-10T01:36:23Z
2016-11-10T01:36:23Z
This Remembrance Day, digital commemoration makes it impossible to forget
<p>On November 11, 1919 the British Empire stopped to stand in silence on Remembrance Day for the first time. </p>
<p>Two men usually share the credit for proposing the two minute’s silence: South African author and politician Sir Percy FitzPatrick and Australian soldier and journalist Edward Honey. In May 1919 Honey wrote a letter to the London Evening News pleading for “Five silent minutes, of national remembrance, in the home, in the street, anywhere indeed where men and women chance to be”. </p>
<p>FitzPatrick and Honey undoubtedly hoped this tradition would still be observed nearly a century later. It’s unlikely they could have anticipated that today it could be commemorated in clicks, likes, shares and tweets which connect “the home, the street, anywhere” in utterly new ways.</p>
<p>New industrial technologies from tanks to poison gas radically changed the scale, speed and global impact of warfare between 1914 and 1918. Afterwards, what psychologist <a href="http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/management/people/steve-brown">Steven D. Brown</a> calls “social technologies” emerged to cope with the trauma. The seemingly timeless commemorative practices of silence, poppies and poetic odes were invented and globally accepted between 1919 and 1922.</p>
<p>These social technologies have all proved easily adaptable to social media in an era of planetary-scale computation. Two Minutes of Silence can be <a href="http://www.britishlegion.org.uk/remembrance/how-we-remember/two-minute-silence/">downloaded to a mobile phone or experienced on YouTube</a>. </p>
<p>On Remembrance Day the hashtag #LestWeForget will be shared millions of times in tweets and Facebook comments. Fields of pixelated poppies will <a href="https://www.facebook.com/FlandersFields1418/?sk=app_169161616616325">bloom</a> <a href="http://www.britishlegion.org.uk/remembrance/how-we-remember/the-story-of-the-poppy/">across social media</a>. A millenial’s <a href="http://anzacdayselfies.tumblr.com/">selfie</a> will display her participation in collective remembrance, and ultimately become a prompt for shareable “On This Day” memories in her own personal timeline.</p>
<h2>We’re engaging more than ever before</h2>
<p>In <a href="http://www.publishing.monash.edu/books/bg-9781925495102.html">Uncanny Valleys and Anzac Avatars: Scaling a Postdigital Gallipoli</a>, I examine our new era of hyperconnected commemoration. Researchers have noted the increasing numbers of people at events like Anzac Day and Remembrance Day in the last decade. We are also seeing an enormous growth in engagement with war remembrance online. </p>
<p>Historian <a href="http://history.yale.edu/people/jay-winter">Jay Winter</a> argues that there were two “memory booms” in the 20th century. The first immediately followed the Great War. Remembrance focused around rituals like the two minutes’ silence represented a collective effort of national unification in the face of a generation lost. The second emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, and saw a drive to remember the Second World War, through media like film and television that recorded or retold the stories of witnesses to the heroism, horror and futility of war. </p>
<p>Some <a href="http://www.gla.ac.uk/colleges/socialsciences/ourstaff/andrewhoskins/">commentators</a> are now beginning to suggest that we are in the midst of a third boom. Post 9/11, in a world of perpetual horizonless wars and participatory social media, we live in an age of constant and immediate remembering. As the last century’s memory booms fade and the wars they commemorate recede from living memory, more and more data about the past is uploaded and recorded, and remembrance accelerates. The stone memorials built after the First World War to record the names of the “glorious dead” are increasingly transformed into columns of the <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/stack">Stack</a>, computerised and streamed in megabits per second to eager family historians and school children. </p>
<p>Social media mourning has extended beyond war into a new form of viral performance, with a reach beyond what Honey and FitzPatrick could ever have imagined. <a href="https://www.academia.edu/26077337/The_net_work_of_mourning_Emotional_contagion_viral_performativity_and_the_death_of_David_Bowie">More than four million tweets in 24 hours</a> connected people to the death of David Bowie, and to each other. The flow peaked at 20,000 per minute. Their <a href="https://vimeo.com/189576743">visualisation</a> resembles culture growing in a petri dish.</p>
<p>Perversely, as commemoration and memorialisation blossoms online, we worry about digital <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/sherry_turkle_alone_together?language=en">disconnection</a>, fear <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/postcolonial-blog/2016/oct/16/why-australia-day-and-anzac-day-helped-create-a-national-cult-of-forgetfulness">forgetting</a> and panic that social media platforms <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-norway-facebook-idUSKCN11I1VU">“censor”</a> history. But, as social scientist <a href="http://www.gla.ac.uk/colleges/socialsciences/ourstaff/andrewhoskins/">Andrew Hoskins</a> argues, memory in the present era is paradoxical. Given the breadth and permanence of the digital archive it is now almost impossible to forget. Online versions of our former selves haunt our <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303480557_Archive_Me_Media_Memory_Uncertainty">“networked egos”</a>. </p>
<p>At the same time, who needs to remember phone numbers, birthdays or anniversaries anymore? With a few toggles, I can be reminded what I was doing last year, share a memory, or create a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/help/359377930889891">“Say Thanks”</a> video. Compulsive, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/risk-and-hyperconnectivity-9780199375509?cc=au&lang=en&">instant memorialisation</a> of everything is everywhere, just as human memory is outsourced to distant servers and, ultimately, into future forms of artificial intelligence. </p>
<p>While the rituals of Remembrance Day seem unchanging, in truth, they are being transformed in our contemporary connected culture. On the first Remembrance Day, people who had experienced World War I firsthand stood together in a single silence filled with private, personal memories of pain and loss. They knew the person next to them was doing the same, but not what was in their thoughts. </p>
<p>Today, the internet offers a chance to personalise our commemoration by choosing when, where and how we take part. We can listen to a recorded two minutes’ silence anytime. A <a href="http://anzacdayselfies.tumblr.com/">selfie</a> taken in a yoga studio and tagged #RemembranceDay is our modern day equivalent of standing still in the factory or the parlour. We are keen to be seen joining in, and can watch and respond in real time to how others are marking the occasion. Online chatter, and frequently debate about the meaning of war, breaks through the silence.</p>
<h2>Past, present and future are blurring</h2>
<p>Increasingly the past, present and future blur together. Contemporary conflicts are commemorated as soon as they occur, using words and imagery from the past. The faces of soldiers and nurses from 1915 appear on our screens alongside those from 1945, 1965, 2005 and 2015. As proof of our ongoing participation accumulates in our feeds and timelines, we are just as likely to be prompted to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjCEVPCT9jE">commemorate commemoration</a> at the same time as we are called to <a href="https://livesofthefirstworldwar.org/">remember the fallen</a>. </p>
<p>In 1919 Edward Honey begged for a few minutes of “Communion with the Glorious Dead who won us peace, and from the communion new strength, hope and faith in the morrow”. Honey feared that in the “hours of peace rejoicing” the dead might be forgotten. Nearly a century later, the casualties of World War I are far from forgotten. Their digital presences are researched, recalled and in some cases <a href="http://about.abc.net.au/press-releases/launch-of-abcnews1915/">reanimated</a> <a href="http://www.anzaclive.com.au/">in ways that make them seem alive</a>. But rituals of commemoration like Remembrance Day, accelerated and altered by our engagement with digital technology, are increasingly as much about framing future memories are they are about connecting with those of the past.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65560/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tom Sear does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The internet and social media are changing how we commemorate war. The hashtag #LestWeForget will be shared millions of times on Remembrance Day in tweets and Facebook comments.
Tom Sear, PhD candidate in history, memory, media and cyber, Australian Defence Force Academy, UNSW Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/62233
2016-11-07T14:44:29Z
2016-11-07T14:44:29Z
The men who impersonate military personnel for stolen glory
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144846/original/image-20161107-4704-ydxams.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Veteran status is a right to be earned.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-264125771/stock-photo-vietnam-war-us-gi-with-his-back-turned.html?src=tqHqGcuZw0s-0F40z0YBJA-1-3">John Gomez/www.shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 2009, a 61-year-old man joined an annual Remembrance Day parade wearing an impressive array of medals. So impressive in fact that an expert said their awarding would have made him “<a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1233634/Fake-war-veteran-Roger-Day-Medals-pukka--Im-sworn-silence-I-won-them.html">world famous – and some sort of Rambo character</a>”. After he was tracked down, the man, later named as Roger Day, claimed his medals were “pukka” but his <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/6780570/Impossible-medal-veteran-served-just-14-months.html">story was denounced</a> by military personnel and the public alike.</p>
<p>Day’s tale is not an unusual case. Over the last few years, more and more instances of “stolen valour” have cropped up. So much so in fact that exposing military impostors has become somewhat of a cottage industry, with verified veterans themselves <a href="http://www.stolenvalor.com/index.cfm">identifying and exposing fraudsters</a>. </p>
<p>In Britain, a dedicated team of previous and currently serving personnel have created “<a href="https://www.facebook.com/The-Walter-Mitty-Hunters-Club-HQ-315222931946839/">The Walter Mitty Hunters Club</a>” to expose those that they claim to be fake military personnel. I spoke to a retired major who served in the UK special forces about the club. He did not wish to be named but said on the record: “Without wishing to comment on the methods employed by the ‘Walter Mitty Hunters Club’, the intent – to expose individuals who falsely claim to have served in the forces – is a public service.”</p>
<p>Though some may question what harm these “eccentric” types do, they actually damage the reputation and credibility of real veterans, resulting in an insidious effect on the way the public view former military personnel.</p>
<h2>Personal gain</h2>
<p>Impersonating a service member is more than just wearing a <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/archives/news/208844/who-bares-sins/">uniform to gain attention</a>. Imposters can access financial support <a href="http://www.itv.com/news/calendar/update/2015-03-18/ex-soldier-turned-war-veteran-in-court-over-fraud-charges/">from military charities</a>, secure employment, and even use the impact of deployment-related illness to gain <a href="http://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/did-soldier-lie-combat-experience-cut-court/story-20312379-detail/story.html">leniency during court sentencing</a>.</p>
<p>In some instances <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/archives/news/134070/lorry-driver-told-his-family-for-15-years-he-was-a-wounded-sas-hero-and-his-cancer-stricken-wife-went-to-the-grave-believing-him/">fradulent veterans with no service history</a> have used information from real operational events in which service members have been killed to establish a credible story, and gain attention for several years before exposure. This can understandably be very upsetting for both the real service personnel involved and the families left behind.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HDZiFH7S5Rk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>But it is not just non-military personnel who make false claims. Some true veterans have also been found exaggerating the truth of their duty. <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15928355">Research from the US</a> revealed that 41% of those in a sample seeking PTSD treatment had exaggerated their combat involvement. </p>
<h2>Famously misleading</h2>
<p>Lord of the Rings and Dracula actor <a href="http://www.spectator.co.uk/2015/07/sir-christopher-lee-and-other-special-forces-fantasists/">Christopher Lee</a> famously encouraged the embellishment of his two-year military service during the World War II. Many believed he served in a number of elite British military units, including the SAS, but in truth he had only been attached as a RAF liaison officer. Though Lee never hid this fact, he failed to clarify his role and allowed false assumptions to be circulated. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yUSHMUVu-Xk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Likewise, earlier this year it was revealed that <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/chris-kyle">“American Sniper” Chris Kyle</a> had <a href="https://theintercept.com/2016/05/25/american-sniper-chris-kyle-distorted-his-military-record-documents-show/">embellished his military records</a>. He claimed to have earned two silver star and five bronze star medals, when in fact he had earned <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2841171-Kyle-Citations.html">only one silver and three bronze stars</a>.</p>
<p>Imposters who have never served are one thing but genuine veterans who talk up and embellish their service career are seen to be the most disappointing and frustrating. Recently retired <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-holt-mbe-2519aa10">Colonel Justin Holt</a> who served for more than 30 years with the Royal Marines told me: “I’ve never met a veteran who isn’t modest, to the point of humility, about his or her service. </p>
<p>He added: "Those who embellish their stories are immediately suspect and do a disservice to themselves as everyone has a part to play in success, no matter how small. The eccentric impostors who have never served are a different matter, they deserve our pity rather than opprobrium.”</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1PbcNzzqfqs?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>There is no doubt that anyone who has served their country deserves far more than the medals and honours they receive – but those who inflate their résumé erode their own real, legitimate heroism they showed during service.</p>
<h2>Valour protection</h2>
<p>Countries such as the US require personnel to serve a minimum period of time, and have been on at least one operational deployment to claim veteran status. Conversely, individuals only need to serve one day of basic training in the UK armed forces to qualify as a veteran – making it the most inclusive service in the world. As a result there are now <a href="http://www.kcl.ac.uk/kcmhr/publications/assetfiles/veterans/Woodhead2009-veteranpopulation.pdf">an estimated 4.8m</a> veterans in Britain, making it easy for fraudsters to go unnoticed for long periods of time.</p>
<p>There are big differences in how fraudsters are dealt with on either side of the Atlantic too. In the US it is a specific criminal offence to impersonate military personnel to gain <a href="https://www.congress.gov/113/plaws/publ12/PLAW-113publ12.pdf">money, property or other tangible benefits</a>. In the UK, impostors are mostly charged under the 2006 Fraud Act if they are found to be claiming to have won medals for financial gain. A new British bill <a href="http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2016-17/awardsforvalourprotection.html">is in the works</a>, however, which would go one step further than the US law. If passed it would prohibit the wearing or public display, by a person not entitled to do so, of medals or insignia awarded for valour, with the intent to deceive. </p>
<p>But are even these strict criminal laws enough to deter wannabe fraudsters? And what impact can amateur hunters really have? Though both certainly may deter some from so publicly announcing their false heroism, it is unlikely to cure the stolen valour epidemic entirely. For that to happen, we need to make it clear to one and all that veteran status is a right to be earned through proper service – not one that can be bought or made up.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/62233/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Leanne K Simpson receives funding from the British Ministry of Defence via their Defence Science, and Technology Laboratory via their PhD studentship scheme researching mental robustness in military personnel. This article does not reflect the views of the research councils or other publicly-funded bodies.</span></em></p>
Why would you lie about battlefield honours?
Dr Leanne K Simpson, PhD Candidate, School of Psychology | Institute for the Psychology of Elite Performance, Bangor University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/68113
2016-11-03T12:35:31Z
2016-11-03T12:35:31Z
Poppies are a political symbol – both on and off the football pitch
<p>When Canadian military doctor John McCrae sat down to write a poem on the edge of a battlefield in May 1915, he could have had no idea how far the echoes of his words would spread. What he wrote – the now legendary <a href="http://www.greatwar.co.uk/poems/john-mccrae-in-flanders-fields.htm">In Flanders Fields</a> – fashioned a symbol of remembrance for his fellow soldiers, felled in war.</p>
<p>Until then, the poppy was more associated with the opium trade. Thereafter, it came to represent those lost in war, far from the basic comforts of life, love, and happiness.</p>
<p>Today, more than a century later, the poppy lies at the centre of another conflict, played out largely on the borders of football fields.</p>
<p>FIFA has announced, once again, that it considers the poppy to be a political symbol. And its rules prohibit players from wearing symbols for political, religious, commercial, or personal statements. The football associations of England and Scotland have vowed to <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/37853386">defy the ruling</a> and will send players onto the pitch on Armistice Day wearing black armbands with poppy emblems. </p>
<p>Even though few could argue that the poppy is not worn as a personal statement of remembrance, many people in England especially appear to be surprised that the poppy is seen as political.</p>
<p>Across the water in Ireland, though, the debate over its symbolism has been raging for decades. Many Northern Irish unionists see the poppy as theirs, representing those who died for their freedom. Many nationalists see the poppy as representing the army that denied them independence in the 1920s and that returned in the late 1960s, bringing with it such events as Bloody Sunday.</p>
<p>For them and others, the poppy is not a universal or unifying symbol. It is seen as a celebration and remembrance of Britain’s dead, Britain’s victories, and Britain’s freedom.</p>
<p>As long as that British nationalism is attached to the poppy, it will remain a divisive symbol. If the poppy solely represented remembrance of the two great wars then it could more easily be detached from contemporary politics. Of course it would still be a personal statement, as it should be because for the vast majority of British people the wearing of a poppy is deeply entwined with family memories, and recalling the sacrifice of fallen ancestors.</p>
<p>For that reason, nobody should be put under pressure to wear a poppy – as happens today in football and in the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6134906.stm">broadcast media</a>. The men who died in World War I, and especially the battalions made up of footballers, could never have believed in the present day practice of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2012/nov/18/sunderland-james-mcclean-death-threat">pressuring players</a> to wear the poppy on their shirts. This reduces the power of the flower as a symbol of remembrance, and is a distraction from what the poppy is supposed to represent – a deep and considered moment of reflection about the horrors of war, and the suffering that comes from seeing friends and comrades sacrificed. The act of wearing a poppy should be a voluntary gesture.</p>
<p>As people don their poppies at this time of year, there is very little mention of the ambitions of the original First World War veterans – to fight the war that would end all wars. Today that phrase is almost absent from discussions about whether or not the poppy is a political symbol. The historical context has been drowned out in nationalistic clamour.</p>
<p>Even if it were more widely debated, wearing a poppy would still be political. The belief in ending all wars is as much a political belief as accepting war as a natural condition of our human existence. You need only look at the hostility some people face for wearing a white poppy – a mark of pacifist remembrance. </p>
<h2>Political football</h2>
<p>There are more layers to this poppy issue than simply red or white, political or apolitical, remembrance or celebration of war. Perhaps from a cultural perspective, the problem is not so much what poppies themselves denote, but the connotations that different groups of people attach to them. I believe that each person’s wearing of a poppy is a personal act, and unfortunately because it is so personal it is not allowed in sporting competition under the existing set of laws.</p>
<p>Whether the rules around political symbolism in sport need to change is a whole other debate. That has been going on since the raised fists of the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/october/17/newsid_3535000/3535348.stm">1968 Olympics Black Power</a> salute, which still resonates today and has directly influenced many of the activities around the Black Lives Matter movement. Unlike that debate, which has been going on for decades and seems set to continue, the contention over poppies in football seems to fade once November passes.</p>
<p>Perhaps that’s the real tragedy of this whole discussion, because we seem to have forgotten what started the tradition of wearing poppies in the first place, and how John McCrae’s words were intended to echo down through the generations – not just for a few vitriolic weeks each year. I believe that the poppy should be worn with true conviction on one day of the year, when everyone recalls that aspiration of an end to all wars.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68113/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Breen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
English and Scottish football players are set to defy a FIFA ban by marking Armistice Day on the pitch.
Paul Breen, Senior lecturer, University of Westminster
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/61129
2016-06-30T15:28:51Z
2016-06-30T15:28:51Z
From the Somme to 7/7: what war memorials can tell us about ourselves
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128836/original/image-20160630-30646-16xcesp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, Germany.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&autocomplete_id=&search_tracking_id=pnrmoyA0d1fq1CK5aoonIw&searchterm=holocaust%20memorial%20berlin&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=173230571">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On July 7 2005, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33253598">a series of explosions</a>, unleashed by four terrorists, ripped through London, killing 52 and injuring more than 700 others. It was Britain’s deadliest ever terrorist atrocity.</p>
<p>The 11th anniversary of that atrocity is now just days away and comes shortly after events to mark the 100th anniversary of the battle of the Somme. The 2007 atrocity will be commemorated around the abstract July 7 Memorial in Hyde Park. <a href="https://www.royalparks.org.uk/parks/hyde-park/things-to-see-and-do/memorials,-fountains-and-statues/7-july-memorial">Designed by Carmody Groarke</a> and opened in 2009, the memorial will be the site of speeches, the laying of wreaths, and respectful silences. But are annual gatherings of this kind enough? Should we congregate around these monuments in remembrance more often, or would the endless replaying of terrible memories from the past stop us from moving forward towards the future?</p>
<p>Monuments of this kind are meant to remain “<a href="http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic822683.files/Riegl_The%20Modern%20Cult%20of%20Monuments_sm.pdf">alive in the minds of future generations</a>”, so we do not forget, so we do not repeat the same mistakes. But our interpretation of the past, as well as the monuments designed to remember them, are under constant change, determined by evolving societies, economics and politics. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128838/original/image-20160630-30632-12zblnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128838/original/image-20160630-30632-12zblnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128838/original/image-20160630-30632-12zblnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128838/original/image-20160630-30632-12zblnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128838/original/image-20160630-30632-12zblnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128838/original/image-20160630-30632-12zblnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128838/original/image-20160630-30632-12zblnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The July 7 memorial, in London.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/dl2_lim.mhtml?src=kTj00JayG65kDRQ9fXnlPA-1-0&clicksrc=download_btn_inline&id=267937034&size=medium_jpg&submit_jpg=">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, remembrance was relatively straightforward: monuments of war offered a powerful visual narrative representing just one side of a conflict – victory. A good example is the Royal Artillery Boer War memorial (1910) in London. The main statue, a female winged figure of peace, is calming a horse representing <a href="http://www.victorianweb.org/sculpture/colton/3.htm">the spirit of war</a>. </p>
<p>The relief on the base includes images of the army in action, but nothing about the monument refers to the devastation and horror of the Boer War in South Africa. The narrative is selective and its message is clear: the Royal Artillery brought peace to the region. The nuances of the truth are unimportant.</p>
<h2>The glorious dead</h2>
<p>How war was commemorated changed during the 20th century, as a result of the awful losses of World Wars I and II. Monuments from this period focused on the casualties – in many cases by adding their names to abstract structures, such as the 1919 <a href="http://www.learnaboutwarmemorials.org/youth-groups/gallery/monuments/">Cenotaph in Whitehall, London</a>. In many cases, these early 20th-century monuments were updated in the 1940s to add references to the fallen in World War II. </p>
<p>The main shift in commemoration <a href="https://www.questia.com/library/119515181/theories-of-social-remembering">came about in the 1990s</a>, however, as a result of the new political dynamic manifested in momentous events such as the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and changes in government in South Africa and several Latin American Countries, such as Argentina and Chile. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128839/original/image-20160630-30635-1x5pds4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128839/original/image-20160630-30635-1x5pds4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=979&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128839/original/image-20160630-30635-1x5pds4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=979&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128839/original/image-20160630-30635-1x5pds4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=979&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128839/original/image-20160630-30635-1x5pds4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1230&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128839/original/image-20160630-30635-1x5pds4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1230&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128839/original/image-20160630-30635-1x5pds4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1230&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">London’s Cenotaph.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&autocomplete_id=&searchterm=london%20cenotaph&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=390341194">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There was a new hunger for a broader understanding of the past, including testimonies and points of view which had historically been ignored, even avoided. For example, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (AKA the Holocaust Memorial) in Berlin, which opened to the public in 2005, offers a “<a href="http://www.english.illinois.edu/people/mpr">multidirectional approach to memory</a>” which includes the narrative of the victims of the Holocaust. </p>
<p>The Bebel Platz memorial, meanwhile, commemorates the site of the May 10 1933 Nazi book burning. This monument, designed by Micha Ullman in 1995, is underground – it can be viewed through a window – <a href="https://www.psa.ac.uk/sites/default/files/Austausch%20Vol%201,%20Issue,%202,%20Oct%20Souto.pdf">consisting of empty bookshelves</a>. Even though these examples were designed in a more abstract way than the memorials of the early 20th century, they still make vivid connections with the past, illustrated by the evocative empty library of the Bebel memorial or the cemetery-like structure of the Holocaust monument.</p>
<h2>Informal connections</h2>
<p>The abstract aspect of the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, together with its location in the city, has brought about a less formal interaction with it. It is used as a public space, where people interact and even play – games of hide and seek, or jumping from one stellae to the next are common pastimes here. There are, however, rules. On the ground you can find instructions on how people are expected to behave around it – loud noises, pets, bicycles and alcohol are prohibited. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128841/original/image-20160630-30638-zhgtyr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128841/original/image-20160630-30638-zhgtyr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128841/original/image-20160630-30638-zhgtyr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128841/original/image-20160630-30638-zhgtyr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128841/original/image-20160630-30638-zhgtyr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128841/original/image-20160630-30638-zhgtyr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128841/original/image-20160630-30638-zhgtyr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Berlin’s Bebel Platz.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/dl2_lim.mhtml?src=R5507VnKMBohYEE796iDkw-1-0&clicksrc=download_btn_inline&id=73788916&size=medium_jpg&submit_jpg=">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="http://www.fodors.com/world/south-america/argentina/buenos-aires/things-to-do/sights/reviews/parque-de-la-memoria-477395">The Memory Park in Buenos Aires</a>, which marks those “disappeared” during the country’s military dictatorship, not only offers a site for remembrance, but also encourages other activities. Music, dance, theatre and arts workshops are commonplace.</p>
<p>The abstract representation of conflict, war, terrorism and violence begs an important question: to what extent do the public comprehend the message of these structures? Would it be better to go back to a more descriptive approach, such as the narrative one used at the beginning of the 20th century? </p>
<p>In the United Kingdom, new war memorials now are concentrated in one location: <a href="http://www.thenma.org.uk/whats-here/about-the-memorials/">the National Memorial Arboretum</a>. The 150-acre site includes more than 320 memorials, representing military associations, charitable organisations, emergency services, fraternity groups and individuals. The most significant and iconic structure is the Armed Forces Memorial, which sits on top of a hill and commemorates veterans who have fallen in conflicts from 1945 (Palestine) until the present, including the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Their names are engraved on the main walls of the monument, as a tribute to their lives, as a reminder of the human cost of these wars.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128888/original/image-20160630-30661-1sk6qwu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128888/original/image-20160630-30661-1sk6qwu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128888/original/image-20160630-30661-1sk6qwu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128888/original/image-20160630-30661-1sk6qwu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128888/original/image-20160630-30661-1sk6qwu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128888/original/image-20160630-30661-1sk6qwu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128888/original/image-20160630-30661-1sk6qwu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Tower of London Remembers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/dl2_lim.mhtml?src=5nKehbzJ03my-VwNKv7QYw-1-11&clicksrc=download_btn_inline&id=216735970&size=medium_jpg&submit_jpg=">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, it seems as if this space has a very specific audience, who are often connected somehow to the armed forces. It is initiatives such as the <a href="http://www.hrp.org.uk/tower-of-london/history-and-stories/tower-of-london-remembers/#gs.2wrWAqQ">Tower of London Remembers event</a>, in November 2014, that has a more powerful engagement with the general public. </p>
<p>During this, 19,000 volunteers helped to install 888,246 ceramic poppies in the moat at the Tower of London, a transitory memorial visited by more than 5m people. Indeed, memories are best reinforced through the creation of new memories. As such, it is important that we all become part of acts of commemoration, to entwine our own memories with those of our predecessors – and to become a part of our shared history.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/61129/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ana Souto does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
History shows how the act of remembrance has changed over time.
Ana Souto, Senior Lecturer in Architectural History, Nottingham Trent University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/50006
2015-11-10T19:21:51Z
2015-11-10T19:21:51Z
This woman’s work: the onscreen and offscreen war service of Claire Adams Mackinnon
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/101225/original/image-20151109-7506-zgwujc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=16%2C102%2C843%2C647&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The life Adams was leading 100 years ago was far from a Hollywood fantasy.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, DC.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Amid the international commemorations of the centenary of The Great War, one name may not be on everyone’s lips. But I would argue it should be. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.nationaltrust.org.au/vic/MooramongClaireAdamsMackinnon">Claire Adams Mackinnon</a> – for those who don’t know – was a glamorous silent Hollywood movie star who stole the heart of Melbourne bachelor <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/mackinnon-donald-john-scobie-11422">Donald Scobie Mackinnon</a> and lived the last 40 years of her life in high-society Victoria. </p>
<p>My recent research, published in the screen culture journal <a href="https://refractoryjournal.net/robinson/">Refractory</a>, explores for the first time Adams’ nursing service and starring roles in feature films made during the first world war. Viewing Adams’s early career within this historical context sheds new light on her significance within the early film industry and provides insight to the origins of her community service. </p>
<p>This work confirms not only that she was an admired actress of her day: she also demonstrated great courage and a strong sense of public service during the turbulent war years. </p>
<p>The life Adams was leading 100 years ago was far from a Hollywood fantasy. Born into two Canadian military families in Winnipeg in 1896, Adams appeared in 18 short motion pictures between 1912 and 1914 as “Clara” Adams for the Thomas Edison Film Company. When war broke out between England and Germany, she quit acting to contribute to the war effort. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/101372/original/image-20151110-29321-69tg8w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/101372/original/image-20151110-29321-69tg8w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/101372/original/image-20151110-29321-69tg8w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101372/original/image-20151110-29321-69tg8w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101372/original/image-20151110-29321-69tg8w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101372/original/image-20151110-29321-69tg8w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101372/original/image-20151110-29321-69tg8w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101372/original/image-20151110-29321-69tg8w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A young ‘Clara’ Adams (centre) with co-stars in The Office Boy’s Birthday (Charles M. Seay, 1913).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Seaver Centre for Western History Research, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>She applied to join the <a href="http://spartacus-educational.com/FWWnurses.htm">Voluntary Aid Detachment </a> or VAD service, a corps of nurses and ambulance drivers trained and managed for the Red Cross by St John’s Ambulance. But owing to her youth and inexperience, she was turned away. Undaunted, Adams enrolled in Detroit’s Grace Hospital Training School for Nurses, one of the most respected teaching hospitals in North America. </p>
<p>By June 12, 1915, Adams was listed on a ferry passenger manifest as an 18-year-old student nurse travelling across the border from Toronto, where her father resided. </p>
<p>All countries or dominions of the British Empire became responsible for the convalescent care of their own wounded troops when casualty numbers exceeded British expectations and resources. Deer Lodge was established as a repatriation hospital in Winnipeg in October 1915. Adams volunteered to work in her home town’s local hospital. </p>
<p>In early 1916, she is recorded as living with her mother in Winnipeg and working as a “doctor’s assistant”. Young women working in any capacity at a hospital during the Great War were referred to as Red Cross nurses. Moving back to Winnipeg also offered Adams the chance to participate in another historical event. </p>
<p>In January 1916, the <a href="http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/womens-suffrage/">women of Manitoba Province</a> were the first in Canada to be granted the right to vote.</p>
<p>Following the Battle of the Somme in July 1916, the number of wounded Canadian troops requiring convalescent care rose from 2,620 to 11,981 by the year’s end. In 1916, Adams was still only 19 years old. When interviewed later in life she explained that she had collapsed that year “under the strain of her work” and returned to motion pictures. </p>
<p>In doing so, she continued contributing to the war effort, but on a scale that exceeded anything she could have achieved in Winnipeg.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/101374/original/image-20151110-29341-1u61dpb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/101374/original/image-20151110-29341-1u61dpb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/101374/original/image-20151110-29341-1u61dpb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101374/original/image-20151110-29341-1u61dpb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101374/original/image-20151110-29341-1u61dpb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101374/original/image-20151110-29341-1u61dpb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101374/original/image-20151110-29341-1u61dpb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101374/original/image-20151110-29341-1u61dpb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Claire Adams with Pat O’Malley in Your Obedient Servant, (Edward H. Griffith, 1917). Edison Conquest Pictures, 1917.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">UC Irvine Special Collections and Archives.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When the United States entered the European conflict in 1917, the US chapter of the International Red Cross was charged by the government to raise funds and volunteers to maintain an active presence on the battlefields of Europe. </p>
<p>The Red Cross recognised the timeliness of motion pictures as an effective means to achieve that end. The National Association of the Motion Picture Industry (NAMPI), chaired by famed producer Jesse Lasky, was enlisted to promote the organisation via a suitable motion picture. </p>
<p>Noted satirist, commentator and graphic artist James Montgomery Flagg, enjoying a career high as the illustrator of the ubiquitous <a href="http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/trm015.html">Uncle Sam</a> recruitment posters, wrote the script. Jack Eaton, who previously worked with Adams at Edison, was brought in to direct. </p>
<p>Under her new stage name “Peggy” Adams, Claire was cast as a nurse named Ethel, the star of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0009642/">The Spirit of the Red Cross</a> (Jack Eaton, 1918). Ethel was the sweetheart of Sammy, played by Ray McKee. When Sammy enlists with the army and sails for France, Ethel volunteers as a nurse. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/100864/original/image-20151105-16231-r0apol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/100864/original/image-20151105-16231-r0apol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/100864/original/image-20151105-16231-r0apol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=875&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100864/original/image-20151105-16231-r0apol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=875&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100864/original/image-20151105-16231-r0apol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=875&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100864/original/image-20151105-16231-r0apol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1099&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100864/original/image-20151105-16231-r0apol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1099&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100864/original/image-20151105-16231-r0apol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1099&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Spirit of the Red Cross (1918).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">World War 1 Posters from the Elizabeth Ball Collection, Ball State University Archives and Special Collections. Ball State University, 2011. All rights reserved.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The film portrays the work of the Red Cross in the field, assisting refugees, nursing and caring for the wounded. On April 21, 1918, The New York Times described Sammy heading for the battlefield, envisioning “Ethel in her white uniform, watching over him”, until:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>After a charge, he lies on the ground with a bullet in his chest, half conscious. The vision of Ethel awakens him, just as a German comes forward slaying the wounded. Sammy grips his revolver and shoots the enemy. Later, removed to base hospital, Ethel finds him and nurses him back to health. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>At the time the film was considered to be “some of the best work done in motion picture making”. What makes the campaign remarkable is that it was the one of the first times such overtly propagandist imagery was mobilised nationwide, amplified by the emotive and visual power of motion pictures. </p>
<p>The American Red Cross expected their national fundraising drive to receive “considerable impetus” from the film. Cinema proprietors donated all takings to the cause. The New York Times noted that they hoped to raise US$100 million, (or around US$1.8 billion today). </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JdI6Z85Y03s?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">End of the Road (Excerpt).</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By the time the Armistice was declared, seven months after the film’s release, the Red Cross had raised approximately four times that sum and one-third of the US population (approximately 39 million people) were either contributing members or active volunteers of the Red Cross.</p>
<p>Flagg’s poster promoting The Spirit of the Red Cross (above) depicts Adams’ character floating over the battlefield. Ethel valiantly directs stretcher-bearers toward the unseen wounded. The plaintive caption declares: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Not one shall be left behind. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Well into her old age it was accepted that <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/mackinnon-claire-adams-10996">Adams had been a nurse</a> for the Red Cross during the first world war. Having taken part in such a high-profile and hugely successful campaign, I suggest that Claire Adams was not simply “a nurse” for the Red Cross: she was The Nurse, the face on the movie poster, the selfless guardian of the wounded and the embodiment of the spirit of the Red Cross.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/100866/original/image-20151105-16255-jkm80p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/100866/original/image-20151105-16255-jkm80p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100866/original/image-20151105-16255-jkm80p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100866/original/image-20151105-16255-jkm80p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100866/original/image-20151105-16255-jkm80p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100866/original/image-20151105-16255-jkm80p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100866/original/image-20151105-16255-jkm80p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Claire Adams as the nurse with a patient in The End of the Road (Edward W. Griffith, 1918).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">UC Irvine Special Collections and Archives.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The next motion picture Adams starred in was another high-profile government sponsored film made for the war effort which proved remarkably popular. However, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0010088/">The End of the Road</a> (Edward H. Griffith, 1919) swiftly became one of the first major censorship scandals of the motion picture industry. </p>
<p>(I explored the reception of this film, which addressed the spread of venereal diseases, the need for women’s sex education and Adams’s public advocacy for these campaigns, in greater depth in <a href="http://refractory.unimelb.edu.au/2015/10/07/robinson/">When a Good Girl Goes to War</a>, published last month.) </p>
<p>This snapshot from Adams’s early life reflects the new opportunities available for young women during the war years, encouraged by the women’s independence movement and the development of the motion picture industry.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/101218/original/image-20151109-7514-1of8cky.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/101218/original/image-20151109-7514-1of8cky.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/101218/original/image-20151109-7514-1of8cky.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101218/original/image-20151109-7514-1of8cky.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101218/original/image-20151109-7514-1of8cky.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101218/original/image-20151109-7514-1of8cky.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=966&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101218/original/image-20151109-7514-1of8cky.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=966&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/101218/original/image-20151109-7514-1of8cky.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=966&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Still of Claire Adams in her role as Ann Blair, released for the American film The Key to Power (1920).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Moving Picture World (Jan. - Feb. 1919) at the Internet Archive</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Adams became something of a role model and mediator between the realities and the fictions. Her characters in The Spirit of the Red Cross and The End of the Road were strong female protagonists, created to inspire and advocate for action, encouraging all viewers, particularly young women, to change their lives and in doing so play an active role in changing their world. </p>
<p>“These roles embody many of the values associated with the New Woman, such as feminism and social reform” wrote Lesley Speed in her article addressing Adams’ impact in Australia, published earlier this year in <a href="http://www.screeningthepast.com/2015/06/in-the-best-film-star-tradition-claire-adams-and-mooramong/">Screening the Past</a>. “But unlike some of her Hollywood contemporaries, such as Clara Bow, her work often reflects a social conscience.”</p>
<p>Adams never lost her sense of duty and social conscience. Indeed, she and her husband continue posthumously to support community causes, including the <a href="http://www.redcross.org.au/">Australian Red Cross</a>, via a substantial trust established after her death in 1978. </p>
<p>We’d do well to remember Adams’s service in front of the camera and behind the scenes, not only in Australia, but also for our allies in the conflict – Canada and the US. At different stages of her fascinating life, she was a proud citizen of them all.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/50006/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Heather L. Robinson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
This Remembrance Day, spend some time with Claire Adams Mackinnon – the silent Hollywood movie star who stole the heart of Melbourne bachelor and lived the last 40 years of her life in Victoria.
Heather L. Robinson, Adjunct associate, Flinders University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/49876
2015-11-09T19:19:13Z
2015-11-09T19:19:13Z
Only the conscription referendums made Australia’s Great War experience different
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/100843/original/image-20151105-29049-1uw8ay4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Thinking about Australia's war experience in comparison with others will soften some of the hyperbole surrounding Anzac.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Jake Sims</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>November 11 <a href="https://theconversation.com/lest-we-forget-why-november-11-lives-in-the-shadow-of-anzac-day-33881">resonates less</a> with Australians than April 25. But Armistice Day provides a moment to reflect on Australia’s self-identity in comparison to other nations that experienced the first world war and commemorate it to this day.</p>
<p>Nations exist in a perpetual state of creative tension. They must appear to be unique: that is the basis of nationhood. However, all nations are essentially the same in form: only the content of legends, heroes and villains differ.</p>
<p>Australia is no different. So, thinking about Australia in comparison with others will provide a more accurate understanding of Australia’s past and soften some of the <a href="http://www.anzacday.org.au/spirit/spirit2.html">hyperbole</a> surrounding Anzac today. And these global comparisons will enable a clearer picture of what might make Australia unique to be formed.</p>
<h2>Ties that bind</h2>
<p>The first world war was a truly global and transnational conflict. This makes it doubly noticeable that centenary commemorations across the world are so dominated by stubbornly national narratives.</p>
<p>Australia is a good case in point. When Australia went to war in 1914 it was part of “the Empire on which the sun never set”. At Gallipoli, Australians fought alongside and were cared for by men and women from Britain, Ireland, New Zealand, British India and France. Australians fought against Turks, Arabs and other peoples of the Ottoman Empire.</p>
<p>Relegating the global and transnational dimensions and reiterating familiar – if erroneous – national narratives creates distortions in the image of the national self.</p>
<p>For example, it is sometimes implied that Australia was the only nation during the war not to impose conscription on its (male) population. This leads to understandings that Australia was unique in its deployment of an army of citizen-soldiers – a sort of latter-day Athens with all of its implied virtues. As retired Chief of Army Lieutenant General Ken Gillespie <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/in-depth/anzac-day/gallipoli-beckons-as-dawn-breaks-on-centenary-year/story-fnm6jz2v-1226896342236">said</a> in 2014, Australia was:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… not founded on militarism; citizen soldiers forged the tradition and that legacy is in our modern Diggers and has flowed through to the population at large. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>But a wider look at the history of the Great War suggests that this citizen-soldier source of uniqueness needs to be qualified in several ways. The South African government did not conscript white men for fear of provoking the Afrikaners, although there was little hesitation in conscripting African labour. </p>
<p>Similarly, men of the British West Indies also freely volunteered their services. But they <a href="http://www.iwm.org.uk/history/the-story-of-the-british-west-indies-regiment-in-the-first-world-war">found themselves</a> reduced to menial and dangerous non-combatant roles when sent to the Western Front. Prevailing British racial attitudes towards “inferior races”, such as the descendants of slaves in the Caribbean, suggested that arming such men in the heart of Europe would only invite trouble – even though the French deployed thousands of men from West Africa. </p>
<p>Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, no official Great War commemorations are currently planned in Jamaica.</p>
<p>The British Indian Army recruited more than 240,000 soldiers without resorting to conscription – an endeavour that historian David Olusoga has <a href="http://www.harpercollins.com.au/9781781858981/the-worlds-war">described as</a> “the largest volunteer army in the world”. </p>
<p>But we must be careful when ascribing motives for enlistment. This is as true for India as it is for Australia. Many of these men from British India were from impoverished villages and war provided the (dangerous) prospect of advancement. But this is not so different from Australia, where the motives for enlisting were various – whatever the official propaganda of the recruitment posters may have implied.</p>
<p>Thus, the suggestion that Australia was the only combatant nation to have free citizen-soldiers is not true. A more accurate claim would be that Australia was only one of two of the “white” Dominions not to impose conscription. </p>
<h2>What makes Australia different</h2>
<p>What is unique, however, is that the proposal to impose conscription was voted down twice in referendums in which men and women voted. Here is something that Australia, as a new nation-state with a reputation for social and political innovation, could offer the world as a unique moment in the history of the Great War.</p>
<p>It is to be hoped that after 2015 the commemorative emphasis will be less on military service and broaden to the <a href="http://www.naa.gov.au/collection/fact-sheets/fs161.aspx">two referendums</a> of 1916 and 1917: a moment for the commemoration of citizenry in wartime rather than soldier-citizenry in war. </p>
<p>It may be that it is difficult to commemorate the intense divisions created by the conscription referendums at a time when bipartisanship rules in the rhetoric of contemporary commemoration. Nevertheless, this could be just the breath of fresh air that the potentially repetitive centenary needs. By looking more closely at others, we will understand more about ourselves.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/49876/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ben Wellings does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Armistice Day provides a moment to reflect on Australia’s self-identity in comparison to other nations that experienced the first world war and commemorate it to this day.
Ben Wellings, Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, Monash University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/34119
2014-11-12T03:12:47Z
2014-11-12T03:12:47Z
Loose cannon Lambie risks being hoist by her own populist petard
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64311/original/z6zf5jds-1415748437.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Has firebrand Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie fallen into the populists' trap of political overreach?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Apart from the <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/outcry-as-schools-shift-remembrance-day-minutes-silence-20141111-11k6qz.html">brouhaha</a> over some Victorian schools bumping one minute’s silence to before or after the traditional 11am, Tuesday’s Remembrance Day commemorations went off without a hitch, soberly recognising – as they should – the solemnity of the occasion.</p>
<p>Also <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/despite-threats-jacqui-lambie-doesnt-turn-her-back-at-remembrance-day-service-20141111-11kcmk.html">thankfully absent</a> was Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie’s back-turning on government figures in protest at what most agree is a pretty paltry <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/raaf-wife-lashes-governments-insulting-pay-offer-20141110-11jut2.html">pay offer</a> for Australia’s military servicemen and women.</p>
<p>Lambie didn’t follow through with <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/adf-pay-deal-protest-jacqui-lambie-calls-on-veterans-to-turn-their-backs-on-ministers-on-remembrance-day-20141105-11h0wr.html">threats to protest</a>, although she would reportedly have done so had any government MP spoken at her local service. Military personnel around the country also refused to turn their backs despite Lambie’s plea. That Lambie and aggrieved service personnel put protocol before politics was surely a relief for government and top military brass alike.</p>
<p>But has Lambie still blown it? Has the working-class warrior, who even before taking her seat in July this year <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/dio-wang-says-jacqui-lambie-does-not-have-to-apologise-for-attacks-on-tony-abbott-20140704-3bcbx.html">declared</a> she wanted to go “all the way”, fallen into the populists’ trap of political overreach?</p>
<p>Many of her critics, and even some of her supporters in and outside the Palmer United Party (PUP), would surely think so. Queensland PUP senator Glenn Lazarus, for example, sensibly <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/pup-split-deepens-with-lazarus-urging-people-to-ignore-jacqui-lambies-protest-20141107-11ilki.html">appealed</a> for military personnel to ignore his Tasmanian colleague. But, despite the backdown, Lambie’s personal political capital may already be compromised.</p>
<p>In politicising such an iconic event, Lambie, in an ill-conceived if altruistic attempt to stand up for a voiceless military, has risked what every populist most fears – being seen as just another bloody politician.</p>
<p>Lambie’s populism is a complex type. So often <a href="http://www.examiner.com.au/story/2601891/lambie-needs-to-get-off-destructive-hanson-path/">compared</a> with Pauline Hanson, Lambie is probably closer to <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/sharia-law-obviously-involves-terrorism--says-australian-senator-dubbed-canberras-palin-9773673.html">America’s Sarah Palin</a> than to the One Nation Party founder. Each is on a mission as a fervent, pro-military Christian. Each hails with a sense of entitlement from a poor and far-flung state.</p>
<p>While Hanson, too, won support as a marginalised woman, Lambie, since her election last year, has looked like succeeding where even Hanson failed. In arriving in Canberra as the outsider’s outsider, Lambie’s even more humble origins and even less compromising <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/dio-wang-says-jacqui-lambie-does-not-have-to-apologise-for-attacks-on-tony-abbott-20140704-3bcbx.html">rhetoric</a> once suggested this underdog from Ulverstone could galvanise more votes, and for longer, than any previous maverick.</p>
<p>As a single mum and Aussie digger who battled a government department, Lambie’s mix of fruity language, self-deprecation and political spade-calling made her the populist’s populist. For evidence, look no further than Lambie’s <a href="http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22chamber%2Fhansards%2F7e859186-6514-413a-8355-cf978ef167f4%2F0117%22">maiden Senate speech</a>. She demanded “a fair go for all Tasmanians and Australians, not just the privileged and rich”, and promised to:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… always take the side of the elderly, sick, needy and disabled, of the battlers, small-business owners and workers, because we know what it feels like to be knocked down.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Heady stuff.</p>
<p>This time last year, few knew Lambie’s name. Today, she’s one of the nation’s most easily identified politicians. It’s for that reason I’m often asked how an ostensibly naive Lambie – a woman who <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/wellhung-palmer-united-party-senator-jacqui-lambie-boards-the-oversharing-express-on-radio-station-heart-1073-20140722-3ccr2.html">announces on radio</a> she likes “well-hung” men then is surprised by the media mêlée – can come so far so quickly. </p>
<p>But what many perceive as nascent naivety is almost certainly pure political nous. In sharing her most personal predilections – and in exploiting existing xenophobic frames by <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/08/19/lambie-warns-chinese-invasion-threat-0">warning</a> of a Chinese “threat” and <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/09/19/senator-lambie-calls-burqa-ban-amid-terror-raids">demanding</a> to “ban the burqa” – Lambie was throwing well-placed media bombs to establish her own credentials well clear of Clive Palmer’s political shadow.</p>
<p>Fourteen months ago, Lambie needed Palmer. Today, Palmer needs her even more – a fact not lost on the renegade Tasmanian who is now almost daring the party to sack her for outspokenness.</p>
<p>With <a href="http://www.roymorgan.com/findings/5898-morgan-poll-state-voting-intention-october-2014-201410280412">support for PUP</a> collapsing everywhere – now at 6% in Queensland and just 2.5% in Victoria – Lambie will undoubtedly growl even louder off the PUP leash. If expelled from PUP in a showdown of party wills, her political martyrdom would only increase her already substantial momentum, with a long career as a Tasmanian maverick independent, like <a href="https://theconversation.com/brian-harradine-a-one-off-who-played-the-power-of-one-to-the-max-25626">Brian Harradine</a>, potentially on the cards.</p>
<p>But that will be possible only if Lambie reins in her rhetoric and observes a few fundamentals. The first is to avoid breaching the most ingrained of Australian values. While she is still clearly popular, her status as a people’s champion does not grant free licence to outrage conservative tenets.</p>
<p>Lambie must also broaden her appeal. To be identified only as the soldier’s friend might be morally uplifting but it’s also pragmatically limiting should she hope to sew together coalitions of national support.</p>
<p>Finally, Lambie must deliver for her state. Harradine lasted so long because he was expert in levering goodies for Tasmania from federal governments. Lambie’s failure to do likewise from subsequent budget negotiations, despite perennial protestations, will again paint the populist as just another mouthpiece.</p>
<p>Good intentions alone might pave the way to heaven and hell, but they do nothing for re-election prospects.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34119/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Williams does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Apart from the brouhaha over some Victorian schools bumping one minute’s silence to before or after the traditional 11am, Tuesday’s Remembrance Day commemorations went off without a hitch, soberly recognising…
Paul Williams, Senior Lecturer, School of Humanities, Griffith University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.