I was talking to a man the other day who was responding to the wearing of the ‘shamrock poppy’ badge by Leo Varadkar in the Dail . This man argued that Ireland should go for a tricolour poppy, and have it as a remembrance of all Irish combatants – in or out of the British army – who’ve died violently since 1914. This, he said, should include loyalist paramilitaries as well as republican paramilitaries, as well as Irish solders in the British army and the Irish army.
It’s a bold, imaginative notion but not one I’d agree with. Not that I’m against discussion of an appropriate emblem for all those people listed above. It’s just that the starting point in this case is the poppy, and I think the poppy is inextricably linked with those who served in the British armed forces.
I have no beef with those who wish to wear the poppy. That’s their right – they see it as a way of honouring the men who died in Britain’s many military escapades over the past century. And there’s no denying, most cenotaph ceremonies are meticulously planned and executed.
But I can’t help thinking of a big capital letters graffito I saw in a run-down area of New York last summer. It read, or was intended to read, “WE WILL NEVER FORGET YOU” – obviously referring to the US armed forces dead. But someone had altered the last word-and-a-half so it now read “WE WILL NEVER FORGIVE YOU”.
That’s one thing you’ll never get at a poppy ceremony. No hint that the millions of fallen dead were sent to their graves in many instances by stupid and evil generals and governments who encouraged and lied and treated young lives as expendable.
That’s why, if I was ever to wear a poppy, it would be white. Whatever else, the white poppy reminds us that what happened was brutal and inhuman on an unimaginable scale and should never happen again.
But of course, as the singer sang to young Willie McBride, it will happen again. And again and again and again. We’d be fools to ever forgive them.
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