Horizon

We just erected an oddball monument here -- our first monument to the Archives War, an 1842 skirmish between Austin residents and President Houston. It's wonderful -- an angry looking woman touching off a cannon, aimed down Congress Avenue.

I actually think the most moving war monument I've seen is the Boer war memorial in St. Kilda, Melbourne. The phrase "to fight the Empire's battles" seemed to sum up a lot about how Australians must have seen the Boer War.

This is getting a bit OT, but the Australian history of the Boer War is an interesting one because it illustrates all the complexities of public memory and myth, especially in a nationalistic setting. Australia only became a united country during the Boer War (before then it was seven autonomous crown colonies) and the conflict in South Africa was a way to create "Australians" as a coherent people within the Empire, and also to try to shed the convict legacy. The difference between the Australian national consciousness of 1900 and today is striking, and this often creates tension within the historical record. For instance, the story of Breaker Morant, the Australian soldier who was tried and shot for war atrocities against Boer settlers, has become for Australians an icon of British "meddling" in their affairs (with links to the Gallipoli myth, and so on). But in fact Morant was *British* by birth, like so many putative Australians at the time; and it was the Australian government itself that pushed hard for his conviction, because it wanted the image of the stereotypical insurbordinate criminal Aussie suppressed.

Oliphant is the sculptor? How'd they swing that?

The most awe-inspiring memorial I've visited is the one on the Somme at Thiepval (here). It conveys the sheer numbing scale of the missing from that one battleground: 73 thousand in the course of twenty months. When I was there in the early 90s there were none of the planned interactive visitor center stuff, just this huge arch and beautiful rolling French countryside. It made you think that, under that beauty, laid tens of thousands of dead. It's also strange driving through that part of France: almost every village has a small cemetary for the war dead.

In the UK, the focus is on Remembrance Sunday which is the first Sunday after Armistice Day. I spent my teenage years rather conflicted: as a strong anti-war person, should I wear the poppy? A badge so tied up with war? I now always wear my red poppy and either a white poppy from the peace shop or a white ribbon (this year I've got a plain white badge with "imagine peace" on it). I've come to recognise that the red poppy is an act of remembrance, not of glorification. The one element which annoys me - and others - is the wearing of the poppy early: you see newsreaders and politicians wearing them in late October and think "you're just doing it to be seen to be doing it".

In the UK, the focus is on Remembrance Sunday which is the first Sunday after Armistice Day.

Actually it began as the Sunday before Armistice Day, unless November 11 or 12 was itself a Sunday; but this appears to have been changed over the years and it is now whichever Sunday is closest. There is a rather complex story to the switchover in days which, if anyone's interested, is told in Adrian Gregory's The Silence of Memory. After World War Two there was a move to change the day from Nov 11 to another, more inclusive day of commemoration which would mark both conflicts: among the days suggested was VE-Day, D-Day, and Battle of Britain Day. Basically no-one could decide on a particular candidate and there was resistance from the British Legion which wanted to keep Armistice Day, so helped by a chance coincidence in the calendar Attlee fudged it in a very British way: November 11 1945, which was a Sunday, was both Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday. The conclusive end to the debate never came, and from 1946 onwards Remembrance Sunday continued as the main day of commemoration by default.

There was a move to change the day from Nov 11 to another, more inclusive day of commemoration which would mark both conflicts

A terrible idea. The advent of Presidents' Day was the death of both Washington's Birthday and Lincoln's Birthday celebrations here. Given the last half-dozen administrations, who'd be interested in celebrating any sort of generic day about presidents?

Alan A wrote:
"Freedom is a light for which many men have died in darkness." I find that very touching, and as true today as it was in 1777.

I agree.

One of the good things about Remembrance Sunday is that according to Dimbleby the music and procedure is set and cannot be changed, at least not easily, which is good protection against PC Busybody and PC Cant ('evening all') trying to get rid of The Minstrel Boy or some such.

And Breaker Morant's poems are ok by me:

http://www.poemhunter.com/harry-breaker-morant/poet-38209/

the music and procedure is set and cannot be changed, at least not easily

What uncommon good sense! I've always felt that civic holidays should have the character of a liturgy -- the times should only affect the embellishments, but never the core.

As far as memorials to dead people go, I have never seen anything which affected me the way the monument in front of Majdenek did. It is probably the most gruesome piece of sculpture I've ever seen. And appropriately so. Witold Tolkin is clearly a genius.

On that subject this picture shows the Mauthausen memorial in Pere Lachaise. The number of steps corresponds to the number in the stone quarry at the camp. It helps to know that the artist counted the steps.