Remembrance in the First World War

Onscreen: [Remembrance]

Before the First World War the focus of remembrance was commanders, was victories, and it was events that happened usually overseas. And it was very rarely about the individuals that took part and their families, and that was whole heartily detached from the experience of soldiers, sailors, and airmen, and the people that they knew and socialized with. I mean there's no doubt that before the First World War the people would still be extraordinarily affected by the loss of somebody they knew, what changed was that as larger communities and as a nation we took on both responsibilities out but also respect all those losses.  

Soldiers have always had a very strong bond with the people that they live with in timeless of conflicts, the people they sit next to, sleep near, eat with and share both their experiences but also their possessions within times of great hardship. And so those people would have gone out of their way to commemorate and to remember the people that they've lost, but in many cases that wasn't always possible either because the war continues and their duties required them to focus on fighting, but also because in many cases the actual person all their possessions was no longer there. And so, we would they would commemorate either the site of great battles we're with crosses and other ways of marking the place in that, you may see photos for example of rifles stuck in the ground with helmets on top or with plaques or carved pieces of wood even just saying some memory or some or some name of somebody that that has fallen in that place.  

Again, that individual nature of remembrance would also have been brought together under chaplains and under commanders who at certain points in the war would have addressed larger groups of soldiers and talked about the sacrifice collectively that these people were doing on behalf of their country. And as World War One progresses you start to see these types of collective memory coming together into a much larger national event, and that leads after the end of World War one to things like the Peace Parade and the March past the Cenotaph, you know the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and then to the tomb in silence and to the wearing of poppies.  

These things became permanent for a number of reasons, and I think one of the most important is that is the sheer scale of that war, and of the impact it had on so many people's lives. The entire nation was mobilized industries, factories, communities, farmers, miners, soldiers, sailors and airmen. And all of their families would have had an incredibly personal connection to what happened there. Then it would have been one or more people in every single family on every Street in the land, when you offer the nation a chance for collective grief that then helps it transform into remembrance, into kind remembrance. Remembrance of sacrifice and remembrance of others. People need that and that was certainly a war that really brought that home on a national scale in a way that had not happened previously.  

In many ways the act of remembrance has remained the same since the First World War, so for example it still takes place on the 11th day of the 11th month and 11th hour the point at which the armistice was signed. This still involves many of the same symbols, the poppy, the Cenotaph, and it takes place at war memorials around the country. The act of remembrance has also changed in a number of ways particularly as the generation involved in World War Two pass away. And a good example of that is that the people taking part in the remembrance parade have got younger, and in many cases, you'll see younger people marching or walking alongside their relatives. And also, you'll see people marching in place of relatives who served who are no longer with us. So, you will see these things continue but you'll see the character and the and the individuals involved evolving as time goes on.  

There's another element here and that is that the practices of remembrance that sprung up in the First World War have been adopted by us in remembering many other types of tragedy and event that is important to us. And that can be seen in Facebook groups remembering people who've suffered a tragedy or were died from illness or killed in a car crash, but also the act of creating personal shrines where something significant has occurred.