Lest we forget

AN EXCERPT from An Utterly Impartial History of Britain (or 2000 Years of Upper Class Idiots in Charge) by John O'Farrell.

The excerpt begins with a fictionalised conversation between an officer and his general:

'Message from reconnaissance, sir. The Germans are digging a trench.'
'A what?'
'A trench. You know, like a long hole in the ground, big enough for them all to take cover. Oh, and they've put a machine gun on the top.'
'OK. Well, why don't we dig one of those, and then we'll just take it from there.'

The Germans had made the discovery that became the key to the First World War: that the combination of trench and machine gun created a barrier that was even harder to get past than a GP's receptionist. The solution was simple; just go round the side. 
But then they build another trench. When the Germans attempted a counter-attack, the British and French built trenches too and then tried to bypass the Germans and thus occurred the so-called "race to the sea", during which each side repeatedly attempted to outflank the other until there was a line of trenches all the way from Switzerland to the English Channel.

'So now what do we do?'
'Er, hang on, let me read the orders from HQ... ah, here we are: we are all to "sit here for three-and-a-half years firing shells at each other until millions of people have died".'
'Well thank God our commanders know what they're doing.'

It is really quite difficult to extract any sort of humour from a conflict which would go on to kill 16 million people - but O'Farrell does well in these few paragraphs to highlight the sheer ridiculousness of the First World War.

By November 1914, 100 years ago, the early German offensive had failed and the Race to the Sea had finished. Trenches did indeed stretch from Switzerland to the North Sea across 400 miles of land, and casualties were already in their hundreds of thousands.

There was nowhere to go and the war should have ended there and then as a horrible idea, with questions asked as to whether it should have even started at all.

Instead, incredibly, the industrial-scale carnage continued hopelessly for another four years. By the end of it, nine million soldiers and seven millions civilians had died.

The poppy soon became a symbol to represent the lives which had been lost, its red hue having somehow sprung from the blood-scorched earth in the days after the guns fell silent.

It is in this way then that, while the poppy commemorates the dead, it also acts as a symbol of the promise of life and peace prevailing.

But, sadly, as present day conflicts rumble on around the world, it is a lesson which humankind is yet to heed.

And this is why we must revisit the Armistice each year in the hope that there will eventually be an end to war.

Lest we forget what that poppy is actually for.