The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month is Remembrance. One of the very few things I was proud of as teacher was the insistence that we gathered as a school on the playground at this time annually and observed a two minute silence. We did not fill the children's heads with ideas of war but rather the duty of a citizen to remember those who had gone before and to participate in a simple but powerful ceremony happening throughout the land. I once attended Britten's War requiem and was accosted by anti war protesters outside. I asked them whether they knew the content of the piece against which they were obviously demonstrating as they can be very few pieces of music as anti war as that of Britten. We do sometimes suffer from knee jerk reactions rather than sufficient consideration - again the death of common sense! This is one of the Americanisms I detest as it threatens the admittedly stodgy British response or restraint, but which I much prefer to over dramatic emotionalisation.
Twenty nine years ago, we baptised our Firstborn on Remembrance Sunday at Hulbert Road Methodist Church. Now our Firstborn wasn't the best baby for sleeping especially in those first few months. The number of times we had to put her in the pram and walk the streets with her or if that didn't work put her in the car and go for a drive - somehow the motion of travel would do the trick! Anyway she looked beautiful wrapped up in her baptismal outfit and shawl. She was also blissfully asleep throughout the entire service and only stirred gently as we approached the font. She beamed at the minister and gazed around in rapt attention. The baptism went off wonderfully and then of course the service ended with the Boys Brigade buglers playing "The Last Post". All I can say is that the Firstborn virtually drowned out the buglers and certainly hit those top notes along with them. She certainly took some considerable time to calm down, I can tell you.
I find the commemoration at the Cenotaph moving and so dignified. "They shall not be forgotten..."
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There are only 3 people still alive in the UK who served in the armed forces in World War 1.....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surviving_veterans_of_World_War_I#Living_in_the_UK_.E2.80.93_3_veterans
I guess when these venerable characters pass on then WW1 will change totally from being living British history (albeit for only three men) to academic history.
Very sad that there will be no-one left to point at the television and say... "You know it wasn't quite like that."
I was recently informed by a source in education that World Wars One & Two may be removed from GCSE History because they are deemed to be too 'non-inclusive' to minority groups.
Maybe now is the last chance for large numbers of teenagers to be taught just how many Sikh & Muslim Indians, Poles, Czechs, Carribeans, Free French, Black American Africans, Māori, Irish, Burmese (Chindits), Gurkhas etc. (and many more 'minorities') fought and often died as our allies in all theatres of World War 2.
I think this 'non-inclusive' argument is a smokescreen. A perpetuation of the Blairite/New Labour vision of a modern Britain without a history but with 'Heritage' substituted instead.
A nice, clean, anodyne, sterilised and commercial version of our history with all the warts removed, just for commercial consumption. A cosy, bucolic and fond glance back over our high-tech, padded, power suited shoulders to a national history that can bottled and bowed and sold in a National Trust shop anywhere with no inconvenient questions and no lessons learnt.
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