The Poppy "Fascists"

[Over The Hill]

I think the Poppy Appeal as it has been for as long as I remember has got it about right.

You are given a no-pressure way of giving to the cause which is naturally timed around 11th November.

You are given the opportunity to show your support for the cause (not the fact that you have given money) by wearing a poppy. This support may encurage others around you and especially the young to see what it is all about and keeps the profile of the appeal up.

I think we can accept that with 500 odd more fallen servicemen in recent years in current operations and countless others injured (plus the millions who have fallen over the years) fellings may run high for some people if the see someone who is not supporting the appeal. I for one have no issue if that is the case.

Pudsy mania is quite another thing though!

 

[asterix]

I've no poppy. Arrived back from France today where Armistice day is a public holiday. So is VE day.

On the roadsides in the Limousin there are many memorials at places where the resistance members were shot. They are frequently almost unnoticeable but very well tended.

There's a similar sort of memorial on top of Garrowby Hill to a bomber crew whose plane crashed there also killing a milkman.

 

[byegad]

People should indeed be free to buy/not buy and/or wear/not wear a poppy.

That is one of the freedoms we have fought for over the years.

I always buy one and wear it for a few days before 11/11 and a day or two after Remembrance Sunday. It gets pushed through sweaters, pinned to coats and lodged in zips depending on what I'm wearing. As I appreciate the sacrifices, past and present, of our armed forces.

I know some of the wars we have been involved in over the years were controversial in some quarters but the Services are at the beck and call of our politicians, who are at least notionally at our beck and call. However the fact remains that we can slag off the government, each other and the Armed Forces because, ultimately we have those Forces. In other countries much of what is written on this board would ensure the writer disappeared, or was imprisoned.

 

[Spinney]

I know some of the wars we have been involved in over the years were controversial in some quarters but the Services are at the beck and call of our politicians, who are at least notionally at our beck and call. However the fact remains that we can slag off the government, each other and the Armed Forces because, ultimately we have those Forces. In other countries much of what is written on this board would ensure the writer disappeared, or was imprisoned.

In a similar vein, I was thinking on bonfire night that we are lucky to live in a country where, when we hear loud bangs, we automatically assume it is fireworks and not gunfire. We have the armed forces who fought in WWII to thank for this.

 

[661-Pete]

A few years ago, we were out walking - on 11th November - out on the Downs near Steyning, and just about 11:00 am we came upon some some wild poppies growing in a field. Weird, that! Usually much too late in the season for them to be in flower... I suppose - I could have picked one and worn it, having no artificial poppy on me - but (a) I don't like picking wild flowers, and (b) it would have been the 'wrong' gesture I suppose.

Hats off to those who have made sincere and thoughtful contributions here! I won't join in the argument. But I am a bit wary of 'badges', whether it's a badge to show you conform, or a badge to show you don't conform...

 

[Fnaar]

If you look after your poppy, it can last for several years (joke)

 

[avalon]

I've never worn a poppy, and don't intend to start.
This is where I make myself really unpopular: All servicemen nowdays are volunteers, it's their choice to join up and kill people.
I am not interested in remembering the past, because the human race never learns from it's mistakes.
My father lost 5 brothers and a sister during world war 2 and never wanted to talk about it.
Everyone has a choice, even conscripts.

Don't waste your time explaining to me about " dying for your country" because there is no such thing.

Well, that made you very popular around here, didn't it J.Y.Kelly.

 

[automatic_jon]

For many years I refused to wear a poppy as I didn't think that civil society and the military should be linked. When I started to think about such things a bit more deeply it occurred to me that during the course of the second world war (not world war 2, that makes it sound like playstation 2) my grandfather, a man I looked up to enormously, who made me the man I am today, helped kill German civilians. The people of Dresden didn't start the war and even if they were complicit in the crimes of the third Reich it was the same complicity as we have to what happened at Abu Ghraib.
More recently I've taken to wearing one in remembrance of all the young men and women from impoverished or deprived backgrounds who were convinced by the government to go off and shoot and bomb other young men and women from impoverished or deprived backgrounds. Such is the nature of war and conflict, it's never the people to decide to have a war who end up paying the price.
A lad I went to school with is currently undergoing a long regime of psychiatric treatment as a result of the things he saw in Afganistan, things a boy from rural East Anglia has no business seeing in the normal course of things.


This probably makes me sound insufferably pretentious but these are the reasons why I have a poppy pinned to the front of my cycling jacket and the reason I respect your choice not to do the same.

 

[XmisterIS]

I think it's a brilliant way of people uniting to show support for the armed forces.

I agree. And I also feel that it is not up to anyone else to tell me how I should do that.

 

[Black Sheep]

For many years I refused to wear a poppy as I didn't think that civil society and the military should be linked. When I started to think about such things a bit more deeply it occurred to me that during the course of the second world war (not world war 2, that makes it sound like playstation 2) my grandfather, a man I looked up to enormously, who made me the man I am today, helped kill German civilians. The people of Dresden didn't start the war and even if they were complicit in the crimes of the third Reich it was the same complicity as we have to what happened at Abu Ghraib.

Having lived in Coventry for the past eight years I might have a different view to most of the country, this is a city that is still feeling the shockwaves of November 14, 1940. The thousands of people in this one city were indeed producing things for the war effort, but the main plan of the raid was to decimate the city.

London, however was not producing heavy machinery for the war effort - but it got the same treatment despite german intelligence knowing that cabinet ministers were hidden away in underground bunkers.

Dresden has long since been argued that it shouldn't have been bombed given that it was such a culturally significant city and ''wasn't producing things for the war effort"

The city only had a roller bearing factory (tanks) and the Carl Zeis lens company producing field binoculars and sights. At the time of the bombing, the war was still going, and in that situation most people wanted to do anything they could to shorten the war.

What I'm not trying to do is justify the devastation dealt to Dresden, that was partly down to a number of factors, wind, small streets and a fair few timber framed buildings - very similar to Coventry then.

What I'm trying to say, is that people hold Dresden up as an example of something that shouldn't have happened, that perhaps the Allied forces shouldn't have bombed as the 'war was coming to an end' - we know that due to history, but in the moment, we didn't know how soon the war would end.

Why do people not feel the same regarding the Dam Buster raid? equal amount of devastation and life lost?

It seems to me that people want to distance themselves from the last large raid of the war - everyone but Field Marshal Harris (Bomber Harris) denounced it in the months that followed as, after it had happened people could see that peace would soon return to Europe and didn't want people thinking of them as war mongers. As a result, as time passes and the reality of total war fades from people's memory (I myself am only 26 years old and so don't even remember the Falklands) they start to take on that view, joining the political sphere in all but denouncing the Dresden attack because of when it happened.

 

[automatic_jon]

Why do people not feel the same regarding the Dam Buster raid? equal amount of devastation and life lost?

It seems to me that people want to distance themselves from the last large raid of the war - everyone but Field Marshal Harris (Bomber Harris) denounced it in the months that followed as, after it had happened people could see that peace would soon return to Europe and didn't want people thinking of them as war mongers. As a result, as time passes and the reality of total war fades from people's memory (I myself am only 26 years old and so don't even remember the Falklands) they start to take on that view, joining the political sphere in all but denouncing the Dresden attack because of when it happened.

Grandfather was also involved with the Dam Buster squadron.
I agree the concept of total war is something that our generation will probably never grasp, there are few people surviving today that remember it. History is or course written by the victors but it is also interpreted by people who did not experience the things they are speaking about. That doesn't make it wrong to condemn something, it is important to have a more impartial view of the past. I used Dresden and an example rather than having a particular point to make over it.

You are clearly better informed on this than I am but I understand the dam raids where targeted on the industrial complex, although the associated loss of life and destruction outstripped the initial estimates.

 

[Kirstie]

Well, for what it's worth, I never really thought about poppies until I visited the battlefields of WWs I (this year) and II (about 20 years ago), which had a massive impact on me. Ever since then I have bought a poppy, in fact this year I've been through three because I've kept losing them!

Interestingly, when I was lecturing, I had a two minute silence in a lecture I gave on 11/11 at 11am one year, in consultation with 250 first year business studies undergraduates, who all agreed that it was a good idea.

 

[asterix]

Nobody wins a war.

I agree the concept of total war is something that our generation will probably never grasp, there are few people surviving today that remember it. History is or course written by the victors but it is also interpreted by people who did not experience the things they are speaking about.

My father was a Normandy Veteran in the Royal Artillery. After Normandy he fought on through to Germany via Belsen. He rarely talked about his experiences, preferring to dwell on present and future, although late in his life he wrote a book that is still a manuscript. The parts written from a journal reveal an initially light-hearted view of conflict that completely changed after the battle for Caen.

We'd like to finish it as best we can by adding the photos he left (including the scenes at Belsen) and putting the events he described into historical context. The latter is proving a very difficult job partly due to the conflicting views of history even between Allies, let alone the enemy. He left behind many letters but infuriatingly, censorship has removed much we'd like to know. They do reveal that he learnt to hate the soldiers he was fighting and also a dislike for the 'opportunistic' US troops he encountered and the fact that 'friendly fire' is nothing new.

Much of the material was given to his regiment some years ago and coincidentally an Army Air Corps helicopter flew over his memorial service (for training purposes).

 

[iAmiAdam]

It's not about charity, is it? It's about showing your support, or solidarity, or sympathy, for the men and women who are prepared to make the supreme sacrifice on our bahalves.

Go on. Wear your poppy with pride.

It actually is though, I don't think half as many people would wear them if you had to pay, rather than give to charity.

 

[Happiness Stan]

Perhaps we should start handing out white feathers to people who don't wear poppies?