Today on Remembrance Day I wear a white poppy, not a red one.
I wear a white poppy because most of those whose lives are destroyed by war are not soldiers who signed up for it.
I wear a white poppy thinking about all the displaced.
I wear a white poppy thinking about the bereaved and the left behind.
I wear a white poppy thinking about the innocents who are slaughtered for no good reason. Afghani or Iraqi children and civilians killed by American drones, and Palestinian children and civilians killed by Israeli ones and of all the millions of innocents who have come before.
I wear a white poppy thinking of those dying of disease and starvation in refugee camps, prisoner of war camps, and concentration camps around the world.
I wear a white poppy thinking of the victims of war who drowned in the Mediterranean and the English Channel, desperately trying to reach safety and a better life.
I wear a white poppy, because most wars, in the history of the world, are pointless. Human beings dying and slaughtering each other for no good reason but the greed and pride of a few powerful people. Because the biggest sacrifice of most soldiers in conflict is that they died for nothing.
I wear a white poppy because while the Royal British Legion does excellent and vital work, it also lessens the governmental cost of caring for veterans and I have no intention of donating to an organisation that mitigates the financial cost of waging war.
I wear a white poppy because when I think of world war one, the brave sacrifice of a young man drunk on jingoistic rhetoric and national pride is a tragedy, but still less painful than sacrifice of the soldier who was bullied or conscripted in against their will, the child who died in the crossfire, the PTSD sufferer executed for cowardice because there was no understanding of the illness, or the stretcher bearer whoās conscience does not allow him to take a life, but will still do all he can to preserve it.
I wear a white poppy because I care deeply, and my Christian faith demands I act in the most loving way possible, and it is infinitely more loving to strive for peace, and mourn the forgotten victims of war, than it is to engage in the romanticisation and glorification or war, in any way, shape or form.
āIf in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devilās sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,ā
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.ā -Wilfred Owen
