White Poppy and Rememberance

Iam64

AreWeThereYet

I'll wear my red poppy and I'll wear it remembrance of all who fall in wars, whatever race, ethnicity, nationality, colour, creed, gender, height, weight, soldier, sailor, airman, civilian and animals too. I get so tired of everything and everyone being put in boxes, as if one box is worth more than another.

I agree .

Suggesting that a white poppy represent desire for peace more strongly than a red one, tends to diminish the significance of the red poppy. The red blood of so many young men on those fields where the red poppies grow is a real reminder of the brutality of war and the futility of the war to end all wars. If only it had

I agree.

You are right ; it was Northern France, Flanders and Picardy. not Normandy. Apologies.

If remembering the dead of two world wars for over 100 years had done any good we would not have got involved in conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.

Perhaps it is time to stop looking back and start looking forward.

GrannyRose15

If remembering the dead of two world wars for over 100 years had done any good we would not have got involved in conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.

Perhaps it is time to stop looking back and start looking forward.

What exactly does that mean you would do?

If looking back on millennia of conflicts would do any good - we would do well to not remember history.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la meme chose.

Alex Penstone, veteran of the Arctic Convoys:

"Man has never learnt a lesson .... that you've got no winners in a war"

même
autocorrect again!

I’ve never heard of anyone wearing white poppies and never seen any here. At first I thought of the white feathers which they used to hand out. I’ll stick to the original red ones which I see as a respectful and a non political way of remembering my relatives and all those others who were killed in the wars.

Most of us do and realise the true meaning, nanna8.

The red poppy is a token of peace. It does not favour one side or the other, it can remember friend and foe alike and remind us all of the fultity of war.

Unfortunately, as my DH pointed out today. Peace agreements rarely solve anything, just gives a lull between periods of warfare. the only thing that finally solves an intractable conflict is a resounding victory for one side.

From Wilfred Owen and the Culture of Commemoration.
On the remembrance festival

it rebrands the army as an aid organisation in selfless service of queen and country. Rather than endorsing the credo of “Never again”, the implicit logic of the festival’s dramaturgy demands that British society unreservedly support the military as a tribute owed to Britain’s war dead. When Wilfred Owen in his famous “Preface” spoke of “the pity of War” this, clearly, is not what he had in mind.

writersinspire.org/content/wilfred-owen-culture-commemoration

Wifred Owen's Preface to his book of poems

This book is not about heroes. English Poetry is not yet fit to speak of them. Nor is it about deeds or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, dominion or power,
except War.
Above all, this book is not concerned with Poetry.
The subject of it is War, and the pity of War.
The Poetry is in the pity.
Yet these elegies are not to this generation,
This is in no sense consolatory.

They may be to the next.
All the poet can do to-day is to warn.
That is why the true Poets must be truthful.
If I thought the letter of this book would last,
I might have used proper names; but if the spirit of it survives Prussia,—my ambition and those names will be content; for they will have achieved themselves fresher fields than Flanders.

We have to ask tho, if Wilfrid Owen had been taking part in the second world war, would he have been writing the same kind of thing ( doubtful) or even have written poetry at all.

I don't think that the reason or objective of the war would have influenced Owen. His concern for the loss of life and the "pity of war" would remain.

But WW2 was a different kind of war, not the endless trench based attrition of WW1, with its enormous death toll.

For the British Army, WW2 was a far more traditional war with less than half the casualties of WW1. Even if you take into account the huge civilian death toll,the death toll was still less than half that in WW1driving the enemy across the country infront of you until they were curtailed within their national boundary.

In WW2 Owen's experience of war would have been very different, he would have had the knowledge of WW1. He would have written very different poetry.

M0nica

But WW2 was a different kind of war, not the endless trench based attrition of WW1, with its enormous death toll.

For the British Army, WW2 was a far more traditional war with less than half the casualties of WW1. Even if you take into account the huge civilian death toll,the death toll was still less than half that in WW1driving the enemy across the country infront of you until they were curtailed within their national boundary.

In WW2 Owen's experience of war would have been very different, he would have had the knowledge of WW1. He would have written very different poetry.

He might have written very different poetry, but his message here for the future applies to all war and is a warning.

One death is one too many and to compare war against war in this context is unimaginative.

My grandfathers described ‘their’ war as one that should never have happened. Ww2 though, they saw as absolutely necessary and one that had to be won. My father was a Royal Marine on the Mediterranean fleet, took part in the Battle of Sicily.
These three men were kind, gentle and knew their history. Their influence on me remains important. I dislike the mistaken idea that the red poppy glorifies war

if you want to have a another colour poppy day choose another day don't come on the back of something already in existence.

lemsip

if you want to have a another colour poppy day choose another day don't come on the back of something already in existence.

Exactly that,

The Kaiser and his Generals wished to expand the German Empire. The allies just wanted the Germans to go home. Ditto WW2, Ditto Stalin post WW2.

lemsip

if you want to have a another colour poppy day choose another day don't come on the back of something already in existence.

So you are saying that the women whose men died in WW1 had no right to judge the red poppy, or to fear that the original intention of remembrance was being overwhelmed by militarisation, or to develop their own poppy. Surely they knew those men best, they suffered losses few of us will ever equal. They had a right to remember them how they wished and those of us who wear a white poppy have the right to honour those women.

M0nica

But WW2 was a different kind of war, not the endless trench based attrition of WW1, with its enormous death toll.

For the British Army, WW2 was a far more traditional war with less than half the casualties of WW1. Even if you take into account the huge civilian death toll,the death toll was still less than half that in WW1driving the enemy across the country infront of you until they were curtailed within their national boundary.

In WW2 Owen's experience of war would have been very different, he would have had the knowledge of WW1. He would have written very different poetry.

Don't know where you are getting your figures from.
This site www.diffen.com/difference/World_War_I_vs_World_War_II#:~:text=Estimated%20to%20be%2010%20million,war%2Drelated%20disease%20and%20famine.
Compares death tolls and has WW1 with approx 20million and WW2 at 60 million.
Perhaps you are just looking at deaths in Europe, or discounting deaths in camps, from starvation of from the nuclear bombs.

The pity of war endures, Owen would still have seen that.

lemsip

if you want to have a another colour poppy day choose another day don't come on the back of something already in existence.

www.ppu.org.uk/remembrance-white-poppies

Some information about the history of the white poppy for you. It is not a new fad.

White poppies are worn every year by thousands of people across the UK and beyond. They were first produced in 1933 in the aftermath of the First World War, by members of the Co-operative Women's Guild. Many of these women had lost family and friends in the First World War. They wanted to hold on to the key message of Remembrance Day, 'never again'.

What hope is there for peace in the world if a grandparent forum can't even agree that there are equally valid poppy colours and that one does not detract from the other.

Ilovecheese

What hope is there for peace in the world if a grandparent forum can't even agree that there are equally valid poppy colours and that one does not detract from the other.

Well put and I agree totally. The “my poppy is more valid than your poppy” and all the elaborations on why that is so are just like the claims that my country deserves to be here more than your country, and
we’ve seen what that does.