The Cenotaph & why it matters.
I cant say I'm a huge fan of monuments or statues. Very often they represent things I do not support, or at the very least things I do not care about.
But some monuments are more important than others, they represent something more than just achieving something memorable. The Cenotaph is significant because of not only what happened to these men (and later women) honoured here or how it happened, that's horrific enough. There is also the why it happened.
The fact that it sits in such a prominent place with no protection is a testament to the power of what it means. 100 years ago, people would have scoffed at the idea some may want to attack it, hell even 50 years ago nobody would entertain the thought.
Because this isn't about glory and celebrating the lives they gave, this is a place of mourning. You climb on The Cenotaph, you are literally climbing on a war grave People may well attach a flag, or leave a wreath because they're honouring the memory of people they've never met, yet deep inside they know they owe them a debt.
If its vandalised, its as near as one can get to desecrating a sacred place.
These men were forced, by law to lay their lives on the line on foreign lands They were ripped away from their families and those they held so dear. Refusal could often lead to prison, or humiliation or indeed the firing squad.
This is The Cenotaph, it stands for everything that is good and noble about the men who were slaughtered on the fields of Flanders during the Battle of Passchendaele. Or the brave men who gave their lives during the battle of the Somme among countless other battles.
In fact, it was originally unveiled in 1920 as a memorial to the men of Britain & the British empire who lost their lives during that first world war. It was rededicated in 1946 to include the second world war.
Since then it has come to symbolise all the people of the commonwealth who gave their lives. There are no remains buried under the Cenotaph, its an empty tomb (Cenotaph literally translates from Greek as empty tomb). People died on such a horrific scale they were simply buried either at or near where they fell, never to rise again.
Its where our national focus goes on remembrance Sunday (the second Sunday in November) The closest Sunday to the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month (Armistice day, when the guns finally fell silent and brought the curtain down on this first world war)
So you bet its important!
While many men (boys) delighted in forming pals battalions to go and kill the big bad Hun, they were also sold a lie. This would be no pushover. With air flight in its infancy and the concept of the tank was still in an embryonic stage, it was the machine gun that ruled the battlefields of the day. But these weren't battlefields, they were fields of mass slaughter, any victory automatically has the prefix "pyrrhic"
These men cowed by propaganda (your country needs you) humiliated by their own women (white feather) and sold mis & dis information on an almost unprecedented scale
The men who worked in our factories, toiled in our fields, emptied our bins and drove our buses were conscripted (forced by law) on a massive scale (in the region of 2.5 million in the first world war alone)
They were our husbands, lovers, brothers fathers and sons! Innocent men marching off to war on the promise of homes fit for heroes only to return (if they were lucky enough) as heroes fit for homes.
This is why we remember them, 3 of my great grandfathers were conscripted into the first world war (the other one was dead) and both my grandfathers were conscripted into the second world war. Both had young families they were forced to leave behind not knowing if they would ever come back to feel their loving embrace once more.
These men matter, The Cenotaph stands as the most powerful symbol in the UK because it represents our families, not just the ones of a century ago, but all of us. Yes many volunteered, but many millions didn't.
So, when it has to be cordoned off for protection, we should all sit up and take note. during the BLM riots of the summer of 2020 many people came out to protect this memorial, yet there is no credible evidence that BLM attacked the Cenotaph. Sure, there was trouble, there always is during protest marches, it only takes one or 2 idiots to ruin everything. As a former avid follower of my football team up & down the country I am well aware how a couple of plonkers can smear everyone as complicit.
But now, once again, there is a need to protect The Cenotaph, so worried are authorities that yet again scaffolding has appeared around it.
While Churchills statue is regularly vandalised by far left lunatics with no appreciation of history and its myriad of nuance, The Cenotaph usually remains largely unscathed. During the BLM riots of 2020 someone had tried to set light to a Union flag that had been hung there and another person had daubed it in graffiti, so its not untouchable. Even at the time of its construction many were against the idea for fear it would become a symbol of celebrating war itself. This is why solemn reverence is important. We owe it to their souls to never allow that to happen.
War memorials by and large do get vandalised though, and more often than the media are willing to admit. Too many to list here, just type...
"UK war memorial vandalised" into your preferred search engine and bear in mind these are the ones the media is reporting on!
The Cenotaph is US.
You touch it at your peril, the men honoured here deserve a level of respect most of us could only dream of.
I visited Tyne Cot a few years back as part of a first world war walk, its the largest cemetery for commonwealth forces in the world. Such a terribly saddening place, I left haunted by the thought of so many pointless lives lost, I don't think the feeling has ever left me. I was particularly struck at the amount of graves simply marked.
"Known unto God"
In Tyne Cot alone, almost 3 quarters of the men who lie here are marked this way We may not know their names, but we know their character, and it is at The Cenotaph we remember them.
This is why it matters. Think about that for a second, 75 of every 100 men who died are not actually known to anyone, well of course, they are actually known to at least 1 person (probably his mum) But more often than not the stories of mothers and fathers losing their sons are shrouded in mystery, they know he probably died, they know roughly what area he was in and they know it happened in the most appalling circumstances. But that's pretty much it! A sons life, gone for a few yards of muddy field somewhere in Belgium. This is why it matters!
OK, just looking at Tyne Cot alone, we get slightly skewed statistics on unknown soldiers. The true figure is a little shy of 600,000 men, still well over 50% of our commonwealth dead from WWI are unknown soldiers.
They say in times of peace sons bury their fathers and in times of war fathers bury their sons. But most of these burials aren't carried out in full military honour, most parents don't even have a grave to mourn, not even a body! The remains of their son are "somewhere" in France or Belgium, he lost his life on the western front "somewhere" and his cause of death was probably "something" and it was an awful death, his last throes of life were probably spent screaming out for his mum, wracked in immeasurable pain as the life drained from him..........probably!
The Cenotaph in Whitehall is the only Cenotaph in England, there are actually 2 in Great Britain, the other one is in Aberdare, Wales. Neither is it the only place of remembrance.
The Unknown Warrior lies in Westminster Abbey. Quite the story as to how he got there. He represents the 600,000
This is why Armistice day matters, this is why we have this one day a year to mourn our sons in solemnity. This is not a cause to celebrate as some left wing nutter opined on twitter, neither is it a time to hitch a different grievance to what some see as a modern day bandwagon. The public at the time took The Cenotaph into their hearts in a way that surprised the authorities at the time. Looking back with hindsight its difficult to understand the surprise.
Some may argue "well the British army did this or they did that" but this most definitely isn't the time for whataboutery!
Some may not care, and I'm good with that, if they don't feel an affinity to The Cenotaph, its entirely their gig. Just don't dare come and piss on my parade, because I DO care!
"At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them"
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