I am a firm believer in the red poppy.
I could almost bring myself to wear a purple one for the animals who were killed in conflict.
But that's as far as I could go.
If people must wear a white poppy, either because they really don't understand what the red poppy symbolises or they feel a need to virtue signal, they do have the right, mainly thanks to the men for whom the red poppy is worn. I would however prefer them to choose one of the 364 other days in the year and leave the 11th for it's original remembrance.
I have been reading a book of David Mitchell's, comedy actor, writer and celebrity "quiz" contestant. He writes upon the subject of the Red Poppy and sums up how I see things but could never be as eloquent. I hope he won't mind me sharing part of it here.
The poppy is an incredibly moving symbol. This flower somehow flourished on battlefields smashed by the world's first experience of industrialised war - a war of unprecedented carnage which became almost as terrifying to the statesmen who had let it start as it was to the millions of soldiers who were killed or wounded by it.
Such was the international shock that, even after our side had won, no one could bring themselves to remember it with anything other than unalloyed sorrow. Not with victory arches or triumphal parades, but with the plain, mournful Cenotaph and a tradition of wearing paper versions of the flowers that had grown among the dead, the petals with which nature had rebuked the murderousness of men. That's why, whilst I understand the point they are trying to make, I disagree with those who eschew the red poppy but wear a white one for peace. To me, the poppy is already a pacifist rather than a martial symbol - a sign that war should be rejected at almost all costs.
The poppy represents the consensus that existed after the armistice - not a military or political consensus, but an emotional one: an overwhelming sense that the indiscriminate bloodletting of total war was too terrible ever to be forgotten, that only in solemn remembrance can any sense be made of those millions of deaths.
So, at the 11th hour, of the 11th day, of the 11th month, I will be remembering
My grandfather, Thomas Kenna, who ended the war with a metal plate in his head and invalided out of the war with mustard gas poisoning. He was never able to work. He died in 1964. I can only remember him visually through pictures but I can still hear his laboured breathing as though it was yesterday.
My Great Uncle, Samuel Longbottom, who died 24/8/16 and lies in the Peronne Road Cemetery, Maricourt, France.
William (Willie) Lacey. who died 27/11/17 and is commemorated at the Cambrai Memorial, Louveral, France, as his body was never recovered. He was not a relative but a friend of Thomas Kenna, above. He made Thomas promise that if he, Willie, was killed, that Thomas would take care of the girl he was courting, Kathleen Haycocks. Thomas kept his promise, not only looking after her but doing so by marrying her. Kathleen was my beloved Grandma Kenna.
I will remember also, all their comrades who fell or made it through from wherever in the world and also the German troops and their allies, who my grandfather looked on as the same as him, young lads who were sent to the slaughter by politicians.
At the going down of the sun, and in the morning - We Will Remember Them.
