missing dust jacket

However, for the last few years I have felt less certain about wearing my poppy, subconsciously pinning in onto a jacket that I’m probably not going to wear any time soon. This year I won’t be buying one.

I worry that wearing the poppy presents the image of a united front of ‘our boys’ against ‘them’, whoever ‘they’ are. I worry I’m closing my eyes to the blood shed by civilians, to the thousands of subjected to rape, degradation and humiliation by those serving in armed forces, and to the prisoners of war locked up for no other reason than they’re on the wrong side.

I’m concerned that wearing the poppy is a sign of support for the gun-toting muppets in power; a pat on the back, a smile, a shrug, that suggests I buy into all the tasty myths they feed us because they’re so appetising next to the truth, which tends to leave a rather sour aftertaste.

A recent British Legion welfare survey, used in this year’s poppy appeal, reveals the following facts:

• 4,000,000 ex-Service people have a long-term illness or disability
• 180,000 ex-Service men and women are never visited by a friend or relative
• 927,000 ex-Service people live on an annual household income of £5,000 or less
• More than 12,000 British Service men and women have been killed or injured on active service since 1945 in conflicts up to the present day, including Bosnia, the Falklands, Afghanistan and Iraq.

I believe that when our government persists in pushing ‘our boys and girls’ into wars their voters do not agree with, they should foot the hefty bill when they return bloodied, disillusioned and alienated. Aren’t you, PM, the one making all these big important foreign policy decisions: surely it’s prudent to take all collateral damage into account before you start chucking fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, daughters and sons in as cannon fodder? Oh, and sorry if my language was a bit emotive - I learnt it from you, along with catchy slogans like ‘Be the Best’ (British Army), '99.9% Need Not Apply’ (UK Royal Marines) and ‘Accelerate your Life’ - die faster? (US Navy).

I believe such language, together with wearing the poppy perpetuates the myth that war is romantic, heroic and worthy of our reverence. So wear it when you read The Iliad, but don’t confuse it with 655,000 dead in Iraq.

And finally, I will not be wearing a poppy for the reasons I used to wear one: because I respect all those affected by war, and because I believe war is fundamentally wrong.

Most GCSE students will not leave school without Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae’s poem appearing for their analysis and meditation on the school syllabus or in a school assembly:

In Flander Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Powerful stuff? I might as well say it now and suffer the consequences: I've never got it. I understand that the central line, both structurally and thematically is of course ‘We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow / Loved and were loved and now lie / In Flanders field’. I understand that when McCrae asks ‘If ye break faith with us who die / We shall not sleep’, he is calling on the living to remember the sacrifices of the dead. But I can’t help but also wonder if he isn’t also imploring us to continue to ‘fight the good fight’.

Who is this foe of whom he speaks, and what if I don’t want to take up his quarrel? What if I think his quarrel is stupid? Or founded on self-interest? What if I drop the torch he’s thrown at me and it breaks and makes an awful bloody mess? And what do you mean, hold the torch high? Celebrate your death whilst I prepare for mine and my partner’s, safe in the knowledge that it will all be for glory? Forgive me, but this is a poem, written by a man who watched a friend and colleague die: this is poem not just of poignancy, fragility and grief but of misery, anger and vitriol.

I would like to see GCSE students have Ernest Hemingway’s In Our Time or A Farewell to Arms pushed into their hands more often. The following extract appears as part of A Farewell to Arms and as an isolated vignette in In Our Time:

Nick sat against the wall of the church where they had dragged him to be clear of machine-gun fire in the street. Both legs stuck out awkwardly. He had been hit in the spine. His face was sweaty and dirty. The sun shone on his face. The day was very hot. Rinaldi, big backed, his equipment sprawling, lay face downward against the wall. Nick looked straight ahead brilliantly. The pink wall of the house opposite had fallen from the roof, and an iron bedstead hung twisted toward the street. Two Austrian dead lay in the rubble in the shade of the house. Up the street were other dead. Things were getting forward in the town. It was going well. Stretcher bearers would be along any time now. Nick turned his head carefully and looked at Rinaldi. “Senta Rinaldi. Senta. You and me we’ve made a separate peace.” Rinaldi lay still in the sun breathing with difficulty. “Not patriots.” Nick turned his head carefully away smiling sweatily. Rinaldi was a disappointing audience.

Ernest Hemingway famously said: ‘I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a method of settling international disputes.’

I agree with Mr Hemingway. And not just because he’s a better writer.