Meeting of the Parliament 08 November 2018
On this, the 100th anniversary of the armistice, there is rightly a focus on the first world war. It is, after all, where the poppy symbol comes from. Rather than fading from memory, service in the first world war has been growing in the public’s mind in recent years. Some of that comes from the work that is being done in schools, where new resources have made it easier for children to learn about what life was like for those who served in that war. There are photographs, letters, poetry, art and links through ancestry that capture the imagination and make us want to know more.
This year, 100 years on, there is a new way of looking at the first world war, the lives it took, and the devastation that it caused. Peter Jackson’s film “They Shall Not Grow Old” has been in cinemas and will be on television this weekend. It brings film footage from the first world war to life through film that has been repaired and turned to colour. The result is a whole new way of seeing that history. The faces of the soldiers look like the faces of people we know and see around us. They might have been us. They are no longer remote, historical people.
The story told through the film is also remarkable. It surprises us in every way, and sometimes in uncomfortable ways. We do not expect to learn that men were enthusiastic and keen to join up and go to France, but they were. We do not expect men to say that they enjoyed much of their life in the Army in the war, but they do. We are sad beyond belief to know that, when they returned to Britain in 1918, many were devastated that their families did not want to hear their stories and find out what they had gone through, the lives lost, and the hell of war.
That is the point of remembrance this week—to hear, to listen to and to learn of those who served their country, whether they were conscripts or volunteers, and to remember their sacrifice.
Wilfred Owen described the mechanised slaughter of the western front as being “as obscene as cancer”. The Scottish Poetry Library ran a public competition to choose whose words should be engraved on a new monument to commemorate the first world war. The lines that will appear on that monument are taken from Neil Munro’s poem, “Lament for the Lads”:
“Sweet be their sleep now wherever they’re lying,
Far though they be from the hills of their home.”