The meaning and integrity of any creative work – literary, musical or visual – inheres in completeness. Imagine Beethoven’s last symphonic work without the great choral cry of “Freude!” Or Shelley’s Ozymandias shorn of its final four lines and thus reduced from an enduring reminder of the transience of power to a graceful, if mordant antiquarian observation.
The meaning and integrity of any creative work – literary, musical or visual – inheres in completeness. Imagine Beethoven’s last symphonic work without the great choral cry of “Freude!” Or Shelley’s Ozymandias shorn of its final four lines and thus reduced from an enduring reminder of the transience of power to a graceful, if mordant antiquarian observation.
The Royal British Legion have released their Poppy Appeal single for 2014 which uses Eric Bogle’s famous 1976 song ‘No Man’s Land’. Or to be more precise, it uses some of Bogle’s text. By cutting the last two stanzas the Legion’s cover of this great anti-war lyric has rendered it no more than a gentle lament teetering on the edge of sentimentality. Bogle’s original builds – as all memorable poetry does – to an organically developed climax which was inherent in its outset. The young soldier, 19 year old Willie McBride whom the lyric memorialises, is asked: “Did you really believe them when they told you the cause? Did you really believe them that this war would end war?” It concludes with the bitter pity of warring humankind – “The killing, the dying – it was all done in vain. For Willie McBride, it’s all happened again. And again, and again, and again, and again.”
In omitting this consummation, the Legion not only destroys the meanng of Bogle’s work, it insults the teenaged soldier who is buried in Grave A36 of Authuille Military Cemetery in Picardy. In the accompanying video, Joss Stone pirouettes in flowing robes before the backdrop of the red poppy installation at the Tower of London. Soulful young men in clean uniforms kiss their sweethearts, write their letters home and stroll over the horizon in soft focus. By producing a piece of work focused on feel-good fund raising, the Legion – which does much good work – has demeaned its own dignity and presented remembrance of the battalions of slaughtered youth – in Bogle’s words, “the whole generation who were butchered and damned” – as a prettyfied piece of romantic nostalgia.
Nothing here is permitted to disturb or to challenge. If remembrance does not challenge us, it can have no meaning and we will indeed be condemned to it all happening again. “And again, and again, and again, and again.”
* Change.org have petitioned the Royal British Legion to apologise for cutting the words of the original song: https://www.change.org/p/royal-british-legion-please-apologise-for-cutting-the-words-of-the-poppy-appeal-song-the-original-song-condemns-the-folly-of-war
* More on remembrance from Ekklesia: http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/remembrance
If you would like to support Ekklesia’s work on remembrance and war, you can use the ‘Donate’ button at the top left hand side of this page.
——
© Jill Segger is an Associate Director of Ekklesia with particular involvement in editorial issues. She is a freelance writer who contributes to the Church Times, Catholic Herald, Tribune, Reform and The Friend, among other publications. Jill is an active Quaker. See: http://www.journalistdirectory.com/journalist/TQig/Jill-Segger You can follow Jill on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/quakerpen