The worst of human failures

David Lockyer reflects on the changing symbolism of the red poppy

by David Lockyer 6th November 2015

‘Support our Heroes’ the poster, emblazoned with the poppy logo, declared. On it there was a photo of a gun-carrying soldier in battle fatigues, striding manfully. How different, I reflected, to the earlier Remembrance Day parades that I recall, at which those who really had cause to remember collected in the cold and damp of dull November mornings to truly spend the silence remembering: those they had known; the horrors they had seen; the deaths too immediate and violent to bear; the tortured wounds of those who only half survived. For them remembrance was real. They knew war as a place of remorseless carnage that made no distinction between the brave and the rest.