Do those who flaunt the poppy on their lapels know that they mock the war dead?

international | anti-war / imperialism | other press

Sunday November 06, 2011 21:39

by Robert Fisk - The (real) Independent 5 November 2011

Fisk criticises compulsory poppy wearing on British TV this time of year

I turned on the television in my Damascus hotel room to witness a dreary sight: all the boys and girls of BBC World wearing their little poppies again. Bright red they were, with that particularly silly green leaf out of the top – it was never part of the original Lady Haig appeal – and not one dared to appear on screen without it. Do these pathetic men and women know how they mock the dead? I trust that Jon Snow has maintained his dignity by not wearing it. http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/....html

Now I've mentioned my Dad too many times in The Independent. He died almost 20 years ago so, after today, I think it's time he was allowed to rest in peace, and that readers should in future be spared his sometimes bald wisdom. This is the last time he will make an appearance. But he had strong views about wearing the poppy. He was a soldier of the Great War, Battle of Arras 1918 – often called the Third Battle of the Somme – and the liberation of Cambrai, along with many troops from Canada. The Kaiser Wilhelm's army had charitably set the whole place on fire and he was appalled by the scorched earth policy of the retreating Germans. ........ My Dad gave me lots of books about the Great War, so I knew about the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand at Sarajevo before I went to school – and 47 years before I stood, amid real shellfire, in the real Sarajevo and put my feet on the very pavement footprints where Gavrilo Princip fired the fatal shots. But as the years passed, old Bill Fisk became very ruminative about the Great War. He learned that Haig had lied, that he himself had fought for a world that betrayed him, that 20,000 British dead on the first day of the Somme – which he mercifully avoided because his first regiment, the Cheshires, sent him to Dublin and Cork to deal with another 1916 "problem" – was a trashing of human life. In hospital and recovering from cancer, I asked him once why the Great War was fought. "All I can tell you, fellah," he said, "was that it was a great waste." And he swept his hand from left to right. Then he stopped wearing his poppy. I asked him why, and he said that he didn't want to see "so many damn fools" wearing it – he was a provocative man .

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Comments (4 of 4)

BBC NI newscaster banned from airwaves for not wearing British poppy symbol

by Henry Holland

Mon Nov 07, 2011 15:40

For years Donna Traynor, a BBC Northern Ireland newsreader, was banned from reading the news in November because she refused to wear the the commemorative war symbol. Then she gave in to the pressure and could be seen sporting the emblem she preferred not to wear. How come John Snow on Channel Four News can escape without ITN's equivalent of Big Brother Corporation coming down on him like a similar ton of bricks? One law for paddies...?

Flowers for a needless slaughter.

by Maeve the Brave

Tue Nov 08, 2011 17:53

Poppies were the flowers which sprung up over the graves of dead German, English ,Scottish,French and,Irish soldiers in World War 1. Some people make politics out of a simple memorial flower.

Robert Fisk

by Crazy cat

Mon Nov 02, 2020 09:13

So sorry to hear of the death of a great journalist Robert Fisk.

Might like to listen to him on desert island discs:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0093v0v

a brilliant journalist

by Mary Kelly

Sun Nov 08, 2020 19:36

thanks Crazy Cat for that link - very interesting man, passionate 'on the side of those who suffer'. Fearless about exposing the complicity of the West in the Middle East wars, this is a link to his talk State of Denial: Western Journalism and the Middle East | Robert Fisk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6ASJA7fbcE

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Do those who flaunt the poppy on their lapels know that they mock the war dead?

Comments (4 of 4)