Post by Old Timer on Nov 7, 2013 16:02:22 GMT
With Remembrance Sunday upon us I penned this piece, having spent time explaining the significance of the poppy to my US boss who has recently returned from a trip to London.
Lest we forget
Eleven o’clock on Monday 11 November will mark 95 years since the guns finally fell silent following World War I.
Although a true accounting can never be made, it is estimated that over 16 million gave their lives, the vast majority on the battlefields of Western Europe, whose disturbed earth was barren except for the bright red poppy (popaver rhoeas) that thrives in such conditions. It was this simple observation that inspired Canadian physician, Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae to pen the most poignant verse of the war, In Flanders Fields.
They are all gone now, those veterans I remember from my youth proudly displaying their campaign ribbons, replaced by equally proud veterans from the second conflagration that was to erupt less than 21 years later. World War II, however, was a global conflict in which over 60 million people or around 2.5 percent of the world population lost their lives. As such, the war graves and memorials are to be found across the globe, many of them tended by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission who care for over 23,000 locations in 153 countries.
In my part of the world, the most noted is at Kranji in Singapore, a former military camp and the site of a large ammunition magazine when the Japanese invaded Malaya in 1942. After the fall of Singapore in February – as best documented in Singapore Burning by Colin Smith – the Japanese organised a POW camp at Kranji and later a hospital at nearby Woodlands.
Changi Prison had been the site of the main POW camp, of course, and on the reoccupation of Singapore it was realised that the cemetery there could not remain undisturbed. So in 1946, the decision was made to extend the smaller cemetery at Kranji and move the graves from the Changi and Buona Vista POW camps. At the same time, many other graves were moved from all over the island, together with those from the Saigon Military Cemetery in what is today Vietnam, as these too could not be assured permanent maintenance.
Today there are 4,461 WWII Commonwealth casualties buried or commemorated at Kranji, with over 850 being unidentified. Tribute is also paid to 64 Chinese members of the Commonwealth forces who were killed following the Japanese occupation and are buried in a collective grave, comrades in arms. Burials and commemorations too for 64 WWI casualties, including special memorials to three who were known to have been buried in civil cemeteries in Saigon and Singapore but whose graves could no longer be located.
Within the Kranji War Cemetery stands the Singapore Memorial with the names of in excess of 24,000 casualties of the Commonwealth land and air forces who have no known grave. Many of these have no known date of death either, but are recorded as of the date they went missing or were captured. These include those who took part in the land campaigns in Malaya and Indonesia, as well as those who died during the construction of the Burma-Thailand railway, or were lost at sea while being transported to imprisonment elsewhere. Also commemorated are the Commonwealth airmen who took part in operations over southern and eastern Asia, as well as the surrounding oceans.
Although by no means as expansive, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery in the Jakarta suburb of Menteng Pulo in Indonesia is no less neat and tidy, or lacking in history. Here are commemorated 715 British, 304 Indian (including Nepalese) and 96 Australian casualties, as well as smaller numbers of other nationalities, though not the Dutch who have their own much larger cemetery in the complex on the other side of the Dutch church.
Some died in fighting the rapid Japanese advance, including those defending the Cililitan airstrip from which RAF pilots flew in vain attempts to protect the city against superior Japanese aircraft. Others, meanwhile, forfeited their lives as part of the Anglo-Dutch resistance around the Sumatran oil town of Palembang, and then there were those who failed to survive the deprivations of the POW camps.
Also buried within the cemetery are those who died after Japan’s formal surrender on 2 September 1945, as the returning Commonwealth forces were to get sucked into the Indonesian National Revolution. Among these was Brigadier Mallaby of the 2nd Punjab Regiment, whose October shooting in Surabaya was to spark a crushing response against Indonesia’s second city. The final recorded interment was that of Major PJW Cuckney of the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry on 14 December 1946, notwithstanding the fact that the last of the British forces had officially left the previous month.
Today they lie here, side by side irrespective of rank, Christian, Moslem, Hindu and Jew, man and woman, each with their own tale to tell. No poppies grow, but colourful sub-tropical trees and shrubs bring a sense of tranquillity to this corner of a foreign land.
They came not to die, but because they made the ultimate sacrifice we have reaped the benefit. Yet as the veterans fade in numbers the torch is passed to us, the link generation whose own family members answered the call. Lest we forget, it is our duty not just to remember them but to ensure that our children, grandchildren and their grandchildren will never forget the debt of gratitude they owe to those who to this day are prepared to lay down their lives so that other can be free.
Lest we forget
Eleven o’clock on Monday 11 November will mark 95 years since the guns finally fell silent following World War I.
Although a true accounting can never be made, it is estimated that over 16 million gave their lives, the vast majority on the battlefields of Western Europe, whose disturbed earth was barren except for the bright red poppy (popaver rhoeas) that thrives in such conditions. It was this simple observation that inspired Canadian physician, Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae to pen the most poignant verse of the war, In Flanders Fields.
They are all gone now, those veterans I remember from my youth proudly displaying their campaign ribbons, replaced by equally proud veterans from the second conflagration that was to erupt less than 21 years later. World War II, however, was a global conflict in which over 60 million people or around 2.5 percent of the world population lost their lives. As such, the war graves and memorials are to be found across the globe, many of them tended by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission who care for over 23,000 locations in 153 countries.
In my part of the world, the most noted is at Kranji in Singapore, a former military camp and the site of a large ammunition magazine when the Japanese invaded Malaya in 1942. After the fall of Singapore in February – as best documented in Singapore Burning by Colin Smith – the Japanese organised a POW camp at Kranji and later a hospital at nearby Woodlands.
Changi Prison had been the site of the main POW camp, of course, and on the reoccupation of Singapore it was realised that the cemetery there could not remain undisturbed. So in 1946, the decision was made to extend the smaller cemetery at Kranji and move the graves from the Changi and Buona Vista POW camps. At the same time, many other graves were moved from all over the island, together with those from the Saigon Military Cemetery in what is today Vietnam, as these too could not be assured permanent maintenance.
Today there are 4,461 WWII Commonwealth casualties buried or commemorated at Kranji, with over 850 being unidentified. Tribute is also paid to 64 Chinese members of the Commonwealth forces who were killed following the Japanese occupation and are buried in a collective grave, comrades in arms. Burials and commemorations too for 64 WWI casualties, including special memorials to three who were known to have been buried in civil cemeteries in Saigon and Singapore but whose graves could no longer be located.
Within the Kranji War Cemetery stands the Singapore Memorial with the names of in excess of 24,000 casualties of the Commonwealth land and air forces who have no known grave. Many of these have no known date of death either, but are recorded as of the date they went missing or were captured. These include those who took part in the land campaigns in Malaya and Indonesia, as well as those who died during the construction of the Burma-Thailand railway, or were lost at sea while being transported to imprisonment elsewhere. Also commemorated are the Commonwealth airmen who took part in operations over southern and eastern Asia, as well as the surrounding oceans.
Although by no means as expansive, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery in the Jakarta suburb of Menteng Pulo in Indonesia is no less neat and tidy, or lacking in history. Here are commemorated 715 British, 304 Indian (including Nepalese) and 96 Australian casualties, as well as smaller numbers of other nationalities, though not the Dutch who have their own much larger cemetery in the complex on the other side of the Dutch church.
Some died in fighting the rapid Japanese advance, including those defending the Cililitan airstrip from which RAF pilots flew in vain attempts to protect the city against superior Japanese aircraft. Others, meanwhile, forfeited their lives as part of the Anglo-Dutch resistance around the Sumatran oil town of Palembang, and then there were those who failed to survive the deprivations of the POW camps.
Also buried within the cemetery are those who died after Japan’s formal surrender on 2 September 1945, as the returning Commonwealth forces were to get sucked into the Indonesian National Revolution. Among these was Brigadier Mallaby of the 2nd Punjab Regiment, whose October shooting in Surabaya was to spark a crushing response against Indonesia’s second city. The final recorded interment was that of Major PJW Cuckney of the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry on 14 December 1946, notwithstanding the fact that the last of the British forces had officially left the previous month.
Today they lie here, side by side irrespective of rank, Christian, Moslem, Hindu and Jew, man and woman, each with their own tale to tell. No poppies grow, but colourful sub-tropical trees and shrubs bring a sense of tranquillity to this corner of a foreign land.
They came not to die, but because they made the ultimate sacrifice we have reaped the benefit. Yet as the veterans fade in numbers the torch is passed to us, the link generation whose own family members answered the call. Lest we forget, it is our duty not just to remember them but to ensure that our children, grandchildren and their grandchildren will never forget the debt of gratitude they owe to those who to this day are prepared to lay down their lives so that other can be free.