“In Flanders Fields the poppies blow, upon the crosses row on row That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below. ” These are the opening lines to one of the most famous poems to be written about warfare. Canadian military doctor Major John McCrae wrote Flanders Fields in Belgium during World War I. In the fighting, the devastation caused to the landscape created a wasteland of churned up soil, smashed up woods, fields and streams. But after the fighting was over, on the ground that had been disturbed by the fighting, poppy seeds that had lain dormant began to germinate and grow. The sight of these delicate, vibrant red flowers growing on the shattered ground caught the attention of McCrae who noticed how they had sprung up around the burial sites of many fallen soldiers. The poem later went on to inspire an American woman named Moina Belle Michael, to pen a response as well as to begin the tradition of wearing a poppy to commemorate and honor the dead. Today the poppy is a national war memorial symbol in the United States as well as countries of the Commonwealth. It is worn on Remembrance Day, a holiday celebrated on Nov. 11 in Commonwealth countries, marking the day that World War I formally ended. In America, this day is analogous to Veterans Day and Memorial Day. Today, the celebration commemorates not only the dead of the two World Wars but also all the armed conflicts that followed until the present day. Memory is an interesting thing. What we remember is intrinsically tied to all the things we choose to forget or to overlook. And Remembrance Day is no different. It’s a day that celebrates collective memory and a national narrative. What do we choose to remember as a nation? Who do we choose to honor? Or in remembering, who are the people we are forgetting? While memorial holidays like Remembrance Day are in some respects created to foster a narrative of unity, they can also be incredibly alienating as groups who don’t fit into the constructed narrative are omitted. This argument is particularly cogent when thinking about groups like immigrants, who arrive in a country and must find ways to fit within the national identity. However, this can be problematic if the dominant collective memory creates tension between national and cultural identity. For example, in Canada during World War I, a lot of tension existed between French Canadians and English Canadians. The French argued that the Anglophone majority was trying to erase their culture and assimilate them into the group, while the English argued that the French were uncooperative. Nonetheless, at the start of the war, a Montreal newspaper, La Patrie, declared “There are no longer French Canadians and English Canadians, only one race now exists, united…in a common cause.” However, as the war raged on and became ever harder, support for it dropped off among French Canadians, who distrusted Britain. The government then drafted the Military Service Act, popular amongst English Canadians, to begin conscription into the army. There was little sympathy for French Canadians and little understanding of the demographic, cultural or historical factors that might have dissuaded them from enlisting. The Act was met by riots in Quebec, with crowds chanting ““Nous en avons assez de l’Union Jack!” (We have had enough of the Union Jack.) Despite the protests on January 1918, more than 400,000 conscripts were called into service while 18,000 in Quebec went into hiding. While the example of the Francophones in Canada is an example of conflicting identities that do not fold into a supposedly cohesive national narrative, the tale of Muslims in Britain may tell us something completely the opposite. This year, 24-year-old fashion student, Tabinda-Kauser Ishaq is selling “poppy headscarves” that she designed to other Muslim women in London. The scarf, with the iconic red flowers printed on light blue material, is backed by the Islamic Society of Britain and all profits will be donated to the Poppy Appeal to support soldiers, veterans and their families. It’s a way of commemorating fallen soldiers in the face of extremist groups fiercely opposing the Armed Forces or as Ishaq said to the Daily Mail, “It’s a simple way to say you’re proudly British and proudly Muslim.” This effort comes despite the racism that many Muslims faced post 9/11 and during conflicts related to the resurgence of extremists in the Middle East. The scarves pay tribute to the thousands of Muslim soldiers who currently fight on the side of the Commonwealth in contemporary conflicts but also to the 400,000 Muslim recruits who fought in France and Belgium, where Flanders Fields was written. This a part of war narrative that Commonwealth countries often leave out: many soldiers who fought and died were not white, were from the colonies, practiced religions different from Christianity, or spoke languages other than English. In America, on a similar note, it’s often forgotten that the celebrators of the first memorial days, were the black men and women who gave dead Union soldiers a proper burial after they had been left out on the fields. National narratives and collective acts of remembering, not only configure who we remember but also the way that we view what we remember. One could make the argument, and many have, that military remembrance holidays are problematic in shaping how societies view war itself. They lead to citizens taking irrational stances about the usage of war and the ethics/practices surrounding armed conflicts: in other words, they could be seen to create a harmful patriotism. This tension goes back to who we view as the face of the “enemy”. The poem, Flanders Fields, itself urges the reader to “take up our quarrel with the foe.” What foe does McCrae mean? And how do we interpret foe? During World War II as America joined the battle after Pearl Harbor, the government sent thousands of Japanese Americans into internment camps. Today, this aspect of the war is not remembered in the same way as the popular narrative of the Holocaust and the millions of American soldiers who served in Europe. Perhaps it’s because we as citizens do not question the ethical practices of our own country during warfare. There is a popular saying that in war nothing is ethical or unethical as long as you are the winner. This view of war as righteous has indeed elicited responses like the White Poppy Campaign in Quebec. The group behind the initiative, the Collectif Échec à la guerre, is an anti-war organization that promotes the non-violent resolution of conflict. They argue the white poppies are an attempt to shift our perspectives on war memorials. It is civilians, not soldiers, who pay the highest costs for war and though we have memorials like the Tomb of the Unknown Solider to commemorate the nameless that lost their lives, comparatively many, many more nameless civilians died at the hands of these men. Although, we can respect those that are in the military and who gave up their lives to preserve and fight for something greater than themselves, we cannot stop questioning their ethics or the morals or ideologies that drive them. But perhaps there is some middle ground. Maybe we can remember both the soldiers and the civilians, we can remember the good and the honorable with the bad and the shameful, we can celebrate as well as question, maybe we can share as well as deconstruct our national narratives. This article was written by Rae Dehal. Send an email to [email protected] to get in touch. Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons