Lest We Forget

I bought my Flanders Poppy yesterday.

Today is Remembrance Sunday.

It was cold, very windy and raining, especially by the Cenotaph (which is on an exposed hill). The weather didn't help the headache I woke with, but I went anyway. It's important.

I will wear my poppy til the Armistice Day.

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I got to thinking about the Great War. And the second one - and how our different experiences of war have shaped how we see it now. Boring History waffles follow

The Great War began at the start of August 1914. We (The British Empire) joined in on August 28th. The British Expeditionary Force (The Old Contemtibles) was entirely regular British army soldiers from the UK. When it wasn't "all over by Christmas" the BEF was reinforced by Empire Troops. The Canadians, South-Africans (at least the white ones) Australians and New Zealanders at that time would have been considered British. They would have considered themselves British too. The Indians, non-white Africans, Gurkhas, Malays, Burmese, Mesopotamians etc were simply Empire subjects rather than British. But they bled and died for the Empire just the same.

The Americans were johnny-come-latelys to that one too. Officially they declared war in 1917. (They hadn't wanted to but the Germans had a nasty habit of sinking American ships - including passenger liners - so they kind of had to join in). The first regiments arrived in France in April of 1918. (Note - many Americans had been fighting with Empire troops or flying with the French Escadrille Lafayette for a long time prior to this). They continued to train on French soil - they finally joined the fighting in August. It was all over by November.

We couldn't have done it without them.

In 1918 the Germans started one last putsch and damn; near won the war. The only thing that stopped them was that they were so afraid of running into regiments of fresh, young, enthusiastic American troops that they did not press their advantage. They would charge forward, capture a few miles and stop. If they'd carried on they'd have beaten us - we were exhausted, we'd lost so many men and with the surrender of the Russians in 1917 the Germans had been reinforced by the regiments from the East.

Their fear of the Americans stopped them.

It was that close.

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It was a truly devastating war here in Europe.

Let's put some numbers on this.

One battle - the Battle of the Somme in 1916 - one day of that battle - the first day - the British Army suffered over 57,000 casualties that day, with over 19,000 of those being killed.

By the end of that battle - just that one battle - there were 320,000 casualties, 500,000 German and around 200,000 French.

By the Armistice in 1918 there was no family in the UK that hadn't lost a member. Fully one-quarter of the adult male population of Europe were a casualties of war.

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And then I got to thinking about the Second World War - the conflict that was a terrible betrayal of those millions dead.

More specifically I started thinking about a question I'd seen on an internet page from an American - a particularly ignorant-of-history American at that. He asked "did the British help us fight the Japs the way we helped them fight the Germans?". Now I know not all Americans are that daft. Believe me I do. But I really wanted to clock him one!!

The Second World War began in Europe on August 1st 1939 when Germany invaded Poland. The British Empire joined in on Sept 3rd 1939. After France fell in the summer of 1940 the Empire battled on alone.

We almost lost it - German Troops pushed us back out of France and into the UK and only idiocy stopped them invading us. We couldn't have stopped them. German Troops had victory after victory in Africa and pushed us back towards the sea. Respite was given by the stupidity of the German leaders who opened a second front in the east and brought the Soviet Union into the fight in the summer of 1941.

The Japanese had been waging war against the Koreans and Chinese since the early 30s but their long-term plans were to conquer the whole of Asia. They put this plan into operation on Dec 7th 1941 by launching a series of massive attacks on many British Empire territories (Burma, Malaya, India etc) including a huge assault on the island of Singapore - which housed the British Navy's largest base in the Indian Ocean - many civilian casualties resulted. They also attacked French Empire territories (the countries now called Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam). Oh yeah - and the American base at Pearl Harbour.

Once again the Americans were brought in to a war they'd tried to stay out of because somebody was daft enough to start trouble.

Over 2 years after the war actually started.

Once again we couldn't have won it without them.

But I'd really like it if some of them could please remember that they couldn't have done it without us either!! In spite of what Errol Flynn movies might have led you to believe there were no American troops involved in liberating Burma!! Just the poor old Forgotten Fourteenth, the local Chindit troops, the Indian Army and the Gurkhas

Of course no Americans were involved in the subsequent battles of India, Burma, Singapore or Malaya to gain their independence from the iron grip of the British Empire either. *g*

I think the thing the thing that really makes our experience of war different - why Americans view things so differently to the way Europeans do is encapsulated by that paragraph up there - the one about Pearl Harbour.

That's the only American territory that was bombed in either of the two wars. No bombs fell on the USA. No foreign armies occupied the USA. Britain, France, Belgium and Germany were bombed in the first war.

Before the Americans entered WW2 Coventry had been reduced to rubble. London, and the South-East of England had been bombed day and night for a year. Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Plymouth and Exeter had had their city centres destroyed. Hell even Darwin in Australia was bombed in 1942. America was not bombed.

Americans probably grumbled about shortages. Britons climbed out of their air-raid shelters and hoped the corner shop was still standing. They queued for their meat-ration in a butcher's shop with no roof left and were served by the butcher's mother because the butcher had died in France, his son was fighting in North Africa and his wife had died in last night's air-raid.

America had not experienced the civilian casualties - huge numbers of civilian casualties - that Europe (and parts of Africa and Asia) had in both wars.

Those differences in experiences colour your views - and they colour the way you raise you next generations.

America could fight in Vietnam because they had only experienced victory and war was something distant. Britain couldn't because we remembered destruction, death and defeat and we'd just surrendered our Empire - we weren't about to build another one.

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The American government can display such fear about terrorism (since Sept 11th) because it's the first true act-of-war that has been felt on American soil since the war between the states. America's first major civilian casualties in 150 years.

The British government is following America in this unjust war but we ordinary people of Europe don't share their fervour because we remember the blitz, we remember invasion, we remember 30 years of IRA terrorism (partly funded by well-meaning Americans) it's a little harder for our government to whip up the fear that America's has.

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And now?? Now....

We have learned nothing from the dead of the 20th century. We have betrayed their hope and the freedoms they died to preserve.

And so hundreds of young American men are still going home in body bags.

If you could hear at every jolt,the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,-
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.