It's a hundred years ago. All the people who were in the war have died. It is long past time to change the rhetoric and speak honestly. Because words are the most powerful thing we have, and how we express things defines how we perceive them, how we feel about them, how we respond to them and, arguably, how they are. We know that. We see it in the impact that political lies have had over the past few years.
And yet still we build war memorials that 'thank' those who 'gave their lives' or 'made the ultimate sacrifice' or, least pernicious but still dishonest, 'fell in service to their country'. Siegfried Sassoon had something to say about such 'memorials':
'Paid, with a pile of peace-complacent stone,
The armies who endured that sullen swamp...
...Well might the Dead who struggled in the slime
Rise and deride this sepulchre of crime.'
They did not sacrifice or give their lives. They were robbed of their lives, health, sanity and futures as though these were not their possessions. Their lives were given by the ruling classes of Europe, intent on having a large-scale squabble as soon as they could find an excuse. Some men and boys were tricked into signing up by talk of glory and a quick win and the honour they would garner, but many were conscripted. Those who signed up were hardly giving informed consent and conscription was downright tyranny. The First World War was not fought over causes worth killing and dying for. There was no Hitler, intent on taking over Euope, there were no death camps where huge swathes of our European neighbours were sent to die. It was about territory and bravado, greed and relatively minor (in the scale of things) differences of opinions. I don't think someone reluctantly conscripted can ever said to have 'given' their life — they have had it taken, given for them — but at least in the Second World War the loss was for a worthwhile cause.
By repeating the heroic rhetoric we endorse the view that this was a 'sacrifice'. Who would stand so comfortably beside a war memorial that began: 'This is to honor and apologise to the young men whose lives were torn away from them, to offer some tiny token of atonement for the lives of men and their families and communities shattered by the pride and greed of Europe's rulers.' It's too uncomfortable, isn't it? Too honest. We read the war poets and know the awfulness, or think we do (but of course we don't) and we might pay lip service to the 'waste of a generation' but still our memorials, those official markers of the atrocity, don't own up to what it was.
My generation is the last to grow up in the shadow of that war. The old people of my childhood were its (surviving) victims. We were taught by the legion of women who never married because there weren't enough men, or they lost their man. Many of us had grandparents who had endured the war, would-have-been great uncles who had died in it, relatives who still woke screaming, still had shattered bodies, had the stain of killing on their memories. As the war passes further into the past, with the centenary of its end being a significant marker in that making history of it, let's not forget. But let's not remember in the voice of official remembrance. Let's remember in the way we remember the Holocaust — as desecration, robbery. In Wilfred Owen's words, 'the undone years. The hopelessness.' Let's remember the men ridiculed and bullied for being conscientious objectors. Let's remember the men who refused to accept their medals because taking part in the shameful travesty was nothing to be celebrated. Let's remember, in Sassoon's words 'the unheroic dead who fed the guns.' Let's recognise that honouring the dead is not as useful for a society, and not as honest, as would be a ceremony of remorse, shame and regret that Europe ever let that happen.
We shouldn't have had to remember them at the going down of the sun; they should have been in their armchairs in the 1960s, grumbling about whatever was on television and sucking Maltesers. And intact. Not having been partially rebuilt by Harold Gillies and his surgical team, or worn a mask, or stayed indoors all their life, or sat on a bench painted blue (to warn the public that horribly disfigured men might sit there, and they should be prepared, when approaching, to hide their alarm). Just suffering the usual troubles of old age, with limbs to have creaking bones in and eyes to become farsighted.
So please let's examine our language carefully. If we say someone 'gave their life', 'sacrificed their life', 'made the ultimate sacrifice', our language assigns agency to the dead. You could almost call it victim-blaming. If we say we honour the memory of the 'fallen' we remove agency; they look unfortunate, as though they somehow toppled into a trench full of barbed wire and hand grenades. The state should own what it has done; we no longer have the widows whose feelings we might want to spare by upholding the pose that their loved ones made an honorable sacrifice (as if they didn't know the real state of affairs!) The responsibility now is to claw something back from that despicable act of carnage. And all that can be clawed back is to prevent it happening again by acknowledging that it's something to be ashamed of, and that what we are remembering is not honour, but the most cataclysmic act of harm humanity has ever (so far) inflicted on itself.
Anne Rooney
Lonely Planet, Dinosaur Atlas, 2017; illustrated by James Gilleard
Winner, 7-12 years, SLA Information Books Award
Shortlisted, Royal Society Young People's Book Award 2018
