Remembrance and regret

You’d think that ‘anti-war’ would be a pretty easy position to present, wouldn’t you? When you think of things that we name Horsemen of the Apocalypse after, it’s not exactly a list of things that split opinion. There is no pro-Pestilence lobby. There is no Society for the Advancement of Famine. Famine especially, Famine’s a right dick. Keeps enough food around to keep an undead horse running for all eternity, and then goes around taking away everyone else’s dinner? That’s the sort of thing that makes it hard to run Horseman PR effectively.

I digress. Of all the Horsemen that the Bible mentions, War doesn’t stand out as one that is particularly defensible. When you look at his discography, it’s a greatest hits list littered with more genuine war crimes than the average Eighties mix that used to pass for music in the Felix office. Scientists being paid to research gases that shut down human respiratory systems; mass acceptance of genocide and the killing of civilians; shady deals that prolong bloodshed and suffering in order to benefit the few. War is shit. I don’t even know why I’m arguing this like it’s a contentious position. Everyone knows that war is shit.

One of the things I respected over the years was wearing poppies in November. For those of you who might be spending their first November in the UK, every year around this time we make donations to a charity in exchange for a bright red paper poppy, which we pin onto our clothes in the days leading up to the 11th November – a special day marking the end of World War One. Poppies became iconic

The reason we wore poppies ... was to remember that war is ugly, unnecessary, and a last resort

largely thanks to a poem describing the flowers that grew in the battlefields of the first World War, fertilised with the blood and gore of man’s inhumanity to man. We wear paper versions of the blood-red flowers to remember the huge sacrifices that were made to fight relatively morally-straightforward fights in defence of people.

That was how it used to be. I’d happily wear a flower each and every year, because the two World Wars fought at the start of the last century were really shit ideas. Only a mounted dickbag like War could come up with a concept so utterly stupid as the first one, and then follow up with the worst second album anyone has ever seen. Why am I even arguing this with you. There is no way anyone on this planet thinks those wars were good ideas. That’s why we wore poppies. That’s why we fell silent every year on the 11th November. That’s why we donate money to charity, to help out the few soldiers that remain that fought in those wars, that offered themselves up to defend the world at large.

But things have changed. Understandably so in some ways – the charity behind the Poppy Appeal, the British Legion, have had to change tack as the last few soldiers from World War One pass away, and the veterans of World War Two begin to follow suit. Now they have a different duty - to look after the soldiers who fought in the wars that came after, right up to the ones we find ourselves in today. That poses a problem, however. Where we once fought wars against unspeakable evil, in genuine defence not just of our country but of all countries, we now find ourselves being asked to remember and help out people who fought in far murkier wars. Wars further afield. Wars fought in pursuit of less noble goals. Wars we are told are being fought for our benefit.

The shift in the advertising tone of the Poppy Appeal, from one of remembrance and regret that war happens, to one of optimism and support for the ‘heroes’ fighting in modern arenas, is one that will leave me behind. I won’t be wearingor buying a poppy this year, and nor should you. While the charity still does good work, the attitude it adopts and wishes us to adopt is not one that is healthy. It is a sloppy mix of dark patriotism and an implied support of anything done by a soldier allied to the British army.

The reason we wore poppies, so I thought, was to remember that war is ugly, unnecessary, and a last resort. Poppies were supposed to be a begrudging nod to the fact that War is a arsehole, not a suggestion that his horse needs a good stroke and a fresh saddlebag of mangled corpses to munch on. The closer we get to associating Remembrance Day with condoning or supporting the actions of those who serve today, the further we get from what I feel the ceremony should really be about, and the closer we come to being a country like America, a nation of people who erupt in tear-filled elation at the news of people being murdered by their nations’s armed forces.

War is hell. Don’t let anyone trick you into thinking otherwise.