By D.P.G. Sheridan
[Essay written 19/5/2014 as part of an MA program, and published through: Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press. Academia.edu]
It is a fair observation to make that the 1st World War instigated many traditions into modern culture which are held in rather high regard. Such things as Armistice Day (11th of November), Anzac Day (25th of April) and the Dawn Service hold the status of institutions now, so much so, that it is difficult to think of a time when they did not exist. Yet, when one tries to find the pre-eminent institution in all these traditions that has taken the imagination of the general public far further than anything else, one is compelled to consider the culture of remembrance that rose out of the ashes of the Great War. Certainly the act of remembering the dead of war is as old as war itself, but there is something particular to the remembrance that emanated out of the 1st World War. As the first truly mechanised war in history, the 1st World War produced such a huge death toll in a time when news mechanisms were not so efficient as they are now, that it became almost impossible to keep up with the colossal casualty notices that were growing daily and this lead to a rising public consciousness about the real costs of war.
The huge death tolls of the Great War were very difficult for post-war groups to deal with, and the scale strained pre-existing ways of grieving. (Wittman 6) Of course, one relatively simple method of dealing with the hugeness of the problem was to create long lists of names; however, this lead to one of the strongest elements of remembrance. The symbolic presence of the dead in those lists of names, when, in many cases, no body could be placed together with its name on a tomb stone, provided a tremendously profound symbolism. The birth of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier stands testament to this fact. The absence of the body was in some way, overcome, and thus the grieving process found a focus. (Wittman 10 & 19) Lists from the Great War can be found all over the world, and they range in size; in East Ilsley, England, there are 21 names listed, but on the Menin Gate and the Thiepval Memorial, there are 54,896 and 73,357 names respectively. (Borg xi & 129)
Along with the listing of names, which at times seems endless, post-war authorities, social organisations and religious groups began to set up other methods of grieving. Such things as Remembrance Days, Marches and Parades, Dawn Services, Commemorative Masses, Battle and Unit Anniversaries, Returned Servicemen’s Leagues as well as War Memorials, all developed out of a tremendous world-wide need to show grief for those who had died and served in war. It had become more than just being at the place of remembrance; there was a developing need to participate in some way to physicalize one’s grief. Prayers were helpful, but just like the ones who had died in war, actions spoke louder than words. Touching or kissing the inscription on the memorial of the dead soldier, more often than not a relative became a common practice for the griever. (Winter 113; Lloyd 135) Photographs, or traced names on
paper, became a familiar activity for those who had travelled to far flung cemeteries (Lloyd 135), often, as is the case now, to visit the graves of great grandfathers or uncles they had never met in life. This is perhaps nowhere more prominent than on the Gallipoli peninsular, where the Australian war cemeteries such as Lone Pine, Hell Spit and The Nek are held to be the most visited military cemeteries in the world.
A certain mythology had arisen from the Great War that was to strongly influence the ways in which post-war people would remember it. What had once been the battle ground was now referred to as ‘the field’. And no longer were the dead called as such; now they were ‘the fallen’. The enlistees did not merely ‘join up’, but they ‘answered the call’, not to the flag, but ‘to the colours’. And with these things in mind, it was only natural that those boys, who had answered the call to the colours only to become the fallen on that mythologised field, were to be venerated as eternally young; never to grow old. The war poet, Laurence Binyun (1869-1943), in his poem ‘For the Fallen’[1], states the following;
They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
Lest we forget.
(Walter 235)
The significance of this poem has been huge ever since the years of the Great War. It immortalised the dead (the fallen) as never growing old, and as young as they were when they went off to war. While it immortalised them as incorruptibles, who would remain pure, even though they may not have been so pure when they lived, it also became the single most important piece of poetry from the 1st World War, because it became what is known as ‘The Soldier’s Ode’ and is recited every day at 6 in the morning and 6 in the evening in many countries around the world where there is an affiliation with the Imperial Forces.
During the 1st World War the soldier began to shed the Big Words (honour, glory and valour) and the noting of the romance of war. This, of course, was because of the carnage of the Somme in 1916, seen by many of the fighting soldiers as a hell on earth, where British Empire troops became Douglas Haig’s ‘canon fodder’.[2] However, after the war a culture of remembrance began to develop, and in this culture the soldier became immortalised. Yet, this 'immortalisation' led to a re-romanticising of the war. This re-romantic attitude is quite distinct though from that of the earlier romantic attitude of such poets as Brooke, Kipling, Munro, Pope and others. Rather than romanticise the war, the culture of remembrance romanticises the memory of the soldier who ‘shall not grow old as we who are left grow old’. However, it should be noted that while the reality was ugly and horrifying, the culture of remembrance view that place, the place where the beloved boys are buried or died, in a more genteel and quiet place where poppies grow[3]. To this effect, the soldier, in this culture of remembrance, has been both immortalised and romanticised – he has been in effect, 'rommortalised'.
The effect of this culture of remembrance, which has steadily been growing ever since the end of the Great War in 1918, has also produced a plethora of poets and poetry. The Great War alone produced something in excess of 2000 poets and many more ever since who have been writing about the war. (Reilly) However, it should be noted that the poets of the 1st World War, who in the early stages had been poet before they were soldier (poet-soldier), such as Rupert Brooke, had become by the time of the Somme, ‘soldier poets’, such as Sassoon, Owen, Gurney, Rosenburg, McCrae and Aldington to name but a few. They were also called ‘Trench Poets’, and were the exact opposite of the poet-soldiers. (Walter xvii – xviii) Yet ever since the end of the war, all of these poets have helped form the national tenure of grief and mourning. Andrew Motion referred to 1st World War poetry as ‘a sacred national text’, (Morton xi) and in the light of this, 1st World War poetry is studied with almost as much vigour as Shakespeare. During the 1960s, when there were four years of fiftieth anniversaries between 1964 and 1968 commemorating the Great War, Ted Hughes called the war ‘our number one national ghost’. (Hughes 70) Yet, as Walter notes, if Hughes’ ghost were to have a name, it would be Wilfred Owen. (Walter xxviii)
Owen’s poetry is considered by many to be the finest work written during the war[4], and is highly valued for its realism and pity. Yet, Owen achieves something very significant in his poetry, and it bears noting that it had become his very intention when he was recovering from shell shock at the Craiglockhart Hospital in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1917. He had wanted to give a voice to ‘the voiceless’ and to warn future generations (as mentioned in his Preface[5]). He had wanted to speak for those who could not, or could no longer speak for themselves. While he certainly achieved this, he had opened up the idea of the ageless voice that Binyun spoke of 3 years earlier. The reason for this is most likely related to Owen’s own death, for only 7 days before the Armistice, he was killed while crossing the Sambre Canal in Ors. The irony of his death was such that the news arrived at his mother’s house in Shrewsbury while the church bells were ringing the Armistice. Owen’s death was just like so many deaths during the war – tragic and needless. In the mind’s eye of the mourning public, they all remained young and innocent.
One might think, however, that over the course of time, this culture of remembrance would wain and fade away, just like the memory of those boys who died as a result of the Great War, but the opposite has happened. The year of 2014 marks the beginning of a 4 year series of hundredth year anniversaries. The feeling of ‘rommortalisation’ is higher now than it was in the first 50 years after the war. All living memory being dead and buried, as there are no surviving soldiers left now, it is only those who have generational or ancestral associations who are keeping the light burning brightly. However, the ‘light’ has never burnt brighter. At the beginning of the 100 year anniversary of the ‘war to end all wars’, mourners continue what might be seen as the culture of remembrance
which will never forget. As war after war continues to foul the face of the earth, the culture of remembrance only becomes stronger and more set into the fabric of human existence. It is thus the case then that the act of remembering forms an act of communion. For Australians it is of the utmost importance, because the Great War, especially Gallipoli, was the birthplace of the Australian national identity, but for others of the Great War, it remains highly significant because it was the first time in history that so many nations stood together. By the act of remembering, they connect again.
Further to this, the culture of remembrance straddles all global groups and sub-groups such as nations (Allied, Central Powers and neutrals), religions, creeds, races, ideologies, genders and so on. Every one of these groups were in some way effected by the Great War, and while remembrance among these then may be made manifest in quite distinctly differing ways, the act of remembering and what is remembered remain the same. Nearly one hundred years of remembrance, passed down from generation to generation, has evolved and grown. It has taken new forms while preserving old ones. It has become on the one hand, a most anticipated national tradition (both joyous and solemn), while on the other hand, an intensely private occasion for thought and contemplation. It still brings, even after all these years, a need to cry and mourn. The occasion of remembrance brings with it such a profound solemnity that those doing the remembering have even begun to consider the act in terms of religion, yet the anniversarial events have taken the form of a secularity of religion. They even come with their own prayers (poetry), their own priests (Masters of Ceremony) and their own saints (the soldiers – living and dead). Of course, this is not to say that God has no part, nor the Church, but the point here is that the culture of remembrance encompasses all peoples, all creeds and all stations of life.
The officer commanding British Forces at the Gallipoli Peninsula, General Sir Ian Hamilton, noted very early on that it would be something like a sacrilege to remove the sublime image of deed, purity and youth from the fallen, even though they were stripped of the chance to further deeds, strengthen purity and the chance to grow old. Speaking after the tragic campaign on the Gallipoli Peninsula, Hamilton wrote: “Though the bodies recovered from the tragedy have been stripped and laid out in the Morgue, no hand has yet dared remove the masks from their faces.” (Hamilton viii) And no hand in one hundred years has dared either. The culture of remembrance is such that even those long gone, who were never met or seen by current mourners, are remembered with deep respect. The natural question one might ask is, why? Why do so many people, generations in fact, remember the dead from a war of which they were not directly a part? Why do they remember a war from a time when they were not even born? For Australians and New Zealanders, the answer is simple; it marked the birth of both nations in the world and formed national identity, but for the rest of the world, it marked the beginning of its place in the modern world, and this brought with it a century of conflict; a century of death in war; a century of remembrance. Thus, the culture of remembrance was rightly born in the Great War.
Yet, while it is correct to say that the living history of the Great War[6] is no more, it still commands the attention of all those effected by any subsequent war. The very institutions of remembrance, which, as we have seen, take their origins from the 1914/18 war, are continually enacted and entered year after year. The culture which has developed over the last century is something akin to church bells calling us to remember – to never forget.
Bibliography
Borg, Alan. War Memorials: From Antiquity to the Present. London: Leo Cooper, 1991
Hamilton, I. Gallipoli Diary, Vol. I. London: Edward Arnold, 1920
Hughes, Ted. ‘National Ghost’, Winter Pollen: Occasional Prose, edited by William Scammell London: Faber and Faber, 1994
Lloyd, David W. Battlefield Tourism: Pilgrimage and the Commemoration of the Great War in Britain, Australia and Canada 1919–1939. Oxford: Berg, 1998
Morton, Andrew. ‘Introduction’, First World War Poems. London: Faber and Faber, 2003
Reilly, Catherine. English Poetry of the First World War: A Biography. London: George Prior, 1978
Stallworthy, Jon. Wilfred Owen: The War Poems. London: Chatto & Windus, 1994
Ed. by Walter, George. The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry. London: Penguin, 2006
Winter, Jay. Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998
Wittman, Laura. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Modern Mourning, and the Reinvention of the Mystical Body.
[1] ‘For the Fallen’ appeared in The Winnowing-Fan: Poems on the Great War (London: Elkin Matthews, 1914)
[2] It should also be mentioned, to be fair, that while British Empire troops were canon folder the Field Marshall Douglas Haig, French troops were the same for Commander-in-Chief Joseph Joffre and the German troops were the same for General Erich Ludendorff.
[3] ‘In Flanders Fields the poppies blow/Between the crosses, row on row’ (John McCrae – ‘In Flanders Fields’)
[4] John Middleton Murry declared Owen to be ‘the greatest poet of the war’ (Walter xxvi) Blunden said that Owen was the greatest of the English war poets (Walter xxvi)
[5] “Yet these elegies are to this generation in no sense consolatory. They may be to the next. All a poet can do today is warn. That is why a true poet must be truthful.” (Stallworthy 98)
[6] ‘living history’ refers to those who were directly involved in, or alive during the Great War. Once the last person is dead from a particular historical time or event, then we would consider there to be no ‘living history’.
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