World War I Centenary: poppies and raincoats

'Poppy?' 'Must be on my other raincoat, mate.' My grandad Alf was in Muckydonia, go on, find it on the map. With the ASC he drove bully beef, bombs and bullets amid the horror there. So who the hell are you to tell me the sort of poppy I should wear? Grandad Jack was with the DLI at Wipers amid the mud and carnage there. So who the hell are you to tell me what raincoat I should wear? For more WWI family history, read Heirloom

September 1918

Those poor beggars. To us, they looked to be either young boys or old men. Dressed in rags, starving. They just threw their guns onto a pile at the side of the road and shuffled off into the distance. My Grandfather, then serving as a Driver in the Army Service Corps, remembered watching the Bulgarian surrender at the end of September 1918. War in a land without a name Southern Serbia, Alf called it where maps now place (Northern) Macedonia or FYROM from Salonika’s dubious attractions to a frontline where even water had to be delivered by mule or lorry train. His war was a sideshow to a sideshow: out of the birdcage, out of the garden. Where boredom and malaria took a greater toll than bullets and shells. Tiadatha’s braves moved out over Muckydonia to face the Bulgar and the Hun. Soil too shallow for trenches; in this land you froze in winter, baked in summer fought mosquitoes and ennui in between, watched all the while by an enemy from Crowns Big and Small and the Devil’s Eye.   Then from Dobra Polje to Doiran the line began to move – following Desperate Frankie’s urgent plan to capture the Vardar and Strumica. In the bloody aftermath, corpses packed standing in lorries the easier to transport, silent sentinels of death. So standing on that dusty road he watched that vanquished army walk away to a shattered land that had bleed so much but now could not bleed anymore. Bulgaria - the first Central Power to fall. An end forming the birth pang of fractious new nations: freedom’s allure mingled with nationalism’s latent dangers. There were no winners in that, Alf said. He was no military hero, never keen on the soldiering life. There because he had to be, yearning to go home: after going through that, I wouldn’t even join a library his response. I owe it to his memory to staunch centenary ‘celebrations’ because there were no winners in that. Nothing for idiot politicians to exploit, nothing to glory in, not after what he saw on the road from Doiran. For Alf and all those of the Entente or Central Powers who fought in 'Southern Serbia' and the Salonika Front. Serb, Greek, Bulgarian, Yugoslav, French, British, Irish, German. It was the beginning of the end and a century on, we still haven't lived up to your legacy, or honoured your suffering and loss.

Remembering: a century on and half a world away

One hundred years ago today, Albert Hyatt, my great uncle, died at a dressing station near the town of Poperinge in Belgium. Knowing the anniversary would fall while we were away, I spent a few moments at the war memorial in Motueke, on New Zealand's South Island to honour his memory. Half a world away from Ripon, where he lived and worked, and the Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery, where he lies, his family remembered him a century on; a Yorkshireman among the Anzac sons of this Kiwi town.

War - and the failure of politics

This is what political failure leads to . The images are striking and have had a profound affect on public opinion. War is not an acceptable or 'normal' part of the human condition - it certainly isn't 'generational' or inevitable. I'm reading a collection of pieces written by First World War veterans that was published originally in 1930. Time and again, they use the phrase 'never again', and many were firmly convinced that they had taken part in the last war ever to be fought; there was no way they could ever imagine another conflict after the horror and loss they had witnessed - no politician could ever make that mistake again. But now, we see remembrance used in a very different way: remember the past, but also with an eye to contemporary and future events - almost as if the past is being used to validate future political shortcomings: 'we fought before and we'll fight again' has replaced 'never again'. On Sunday, I'll stand before a war memorial, as I did in years gone by with my granddad and my dad - veterans of the First and Second World wars. When I was young, I wondered why dad didn't wear his medals when the others did. He replied that they 'meant nothing' to him, and that the regimental mascot, a bulldog, had been given the same ones. For dad - who fought in North Africa, Sicily and Italy - war was neither normal or inevitable. He'd been brought up in a family where is dad and uncles had fought - and in one case died - in the war 'to end all wars' and he knew that the conflict he had had to endure was a result of the failure of politicians to secure a lasting peace, compounding the failure that led to the First World War. Now, I have to stand on my own, my granddad and beloved dad have gone, but I go to honour their memory and remember the suffering they and their comrades and former enemies had to endure. But I have a growing sense of unease when politicians now speak of war was inevitable, or of engendering military discipline in our schools, because this makes conflict seem commonplace, even acceptable, especially when fought in far away places, where its victims are not placed in the public eye - we hear about the casualties, but the ambulance trains do not bring the wounded home to the full glare of the public gaze, as in those earlier wars. The suffering has almost been sanitised and the media - especially the tabloid end - uses this language and imagery to perpetuate the old myth: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori

Happy Anniversary

The picture was taken 100 years ago today - my grandparents married at St Andrew's Church, Burley, Leeds on 1 June 1914. Just 27 days later, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne was assassinated in Sarajevo - a place that most of the people in the photograph would never had heard of. But by the beginning of August, WWI was declared and within 4 years my grandfather would be fighting in Flanders and of his two brothers, Arthur would be a prisoner of war in Germany, and his youngest brother, Albert, would be dead - killed in an air raid at Ypres. Of two of the male cousins in the photograph, one would lie about his age to enlist and another would endure the opprobrium and ridicule reserved for the conscientious objector. Before the public displays of remembrance start, I want to offer my family as an example - on this, the centenary of my grandparents' wedding - as a reminder of what war did to ordinary people, and how they coped with the horror of events way beyond their experience or control.

Jeremy Paxman's War

Although Paxo gave some good insights into the way WWI affected life on the home front, the overwhelming coverage given to the Western Front gave a rather one-dimensional aspect to the series. He only seemed to mention the Dardanelles briefly and failed to give any coverage to the fighting that took place in Palestine, Mesopotamia and Salonika-Macedonia. It was on this latter front that, arguably, the Central Powers began to fall apart, after first Bulgaria and then Austro-Hungary sued for peace, leaving Germany, in Hindenburg's words to 'wage war alone against the world'. It was also irritating to hear him shoe-horn the phrase 'all in this together' into his commentary in a couple of places. The centenary is far too important for politicians - or those who comment on their activities - to use for their own narrow ends. Don't want Paxo to start a trend that Cameron - with his desire to turn the whole thing into a 'commemoration' - can use for party political tub-thumping in the run up to the 2015 general election.

Your Country's Commemoration Needs You, By Jingo!

The choice of Lord Kitchener's image - and blunt 'your country needs you' slogan as the coin design to commemorate the centenary of World War I bodes ill for those, like Jeremy Paxman, who feared the coalition government would turn this event into a jingoistic flag-waver, or worse, a flag-draped smokescreen that could be harnessed for electoral purposes. My granddad, who served as a Driver in the Army Service Corps in Greece and Macedonia in that conflict used to joke that they gave them a medal that said they'd fought 'for civilisation' because the powers that be couldn't admit to not having a clue as to what the war had actually been about. The forthcoming centenary will evoke many feelings - while my grandfather's generation have now passed on - they left a powerful evocation of the suffering and horror of war, even though they were told not to talk about it when they returned - and many didn't because deference to authority was such a powerful element of early 20th century society. Times have changed, and the memory of our loved ones - both those who returned and those who did not - taken together with our current prediliction for conflict and even involving the military in schools means we should not merely accept the events and artefacts given to us to remember but rather actively question their motive and appropriateness over the next four years.

World War I commemoration - far too important for the politicians to control or direct

I know he was selling a book, but Paxman came across well on Graham Norton last night, and the audience approved of his repeated criticism of Cameron's idiotic linkage of WWI commemoration with Jubilee celebration. While the First World War is now beyond personal memories, it is certainly still a large part of collective folk/family memory: how many families have granddad's or great granddad's medals in a tin or drawer? The commemoration needs to focus on that shared memory - not made easy, as many of that generation followed their orders not to talk about the suffering and loss when they came home. Damn the British sense of deference to our 'elders and betters' - something that should have sunk in the mud of Flanders, but sadly limped on for a few more years. We don't want cloying sentiment or triumphant flag waving - that would only serve to cheapen and demean the memory of those who suffered; but we can't afford to let the political class make the running either. August 2014 is less than a year away from the general election due in May 2015 and it would be appalling if Cameron, Crosby, Osborne et al were to try create a patriotic smokescreen to garner a few votes. Remember those who went before us - those ancestors who returned and those who lie in Commonwealth War Grave cemeteries (Britain legislated against returning their bodies, partly to prevent the full extent of the losses becoming known, for fear of undermining the war effort or encouraging civil unrest). Remember, but don't allow any hint of 'celebration' to enter the equation.