There were soo many poppies and crosses on the front lawn of Westminster Abbey last weekend. Battles fought, heroes made, lives lost.
I found the remembrance station for the Commonwealth fallen soldiers. There were few poppies or crosses in this station. Then I saw ‘St. Kitts and Nevis Legion’. It came home that war-heroes-memorials were not unnecessary, unfathomable nor unvisited. My own countrymen gave their lives for something and the green-painted rusty WWII gun which I played with whenever I went to my town’s square was more than a toy.
I then went to the poppies table, no longer seeing brisk business as it was now late evening, which offered poppies and crosses for a donation. Then with three bangs of the black mallet I planted a cross and thought of the bangs which may have taken the women’s lives and the bangs that came from the green rusty gun now in my island’s town square.
I came away having connected a childhood memory to what had appeared as a British pomp and ceremony poppyfest to something deeper (and also with a blue and red poppies wrist band).
Wendy how very moving. I used to go to the ceremony with my father in Croydon. He was a London Borough Councillor. I wore my School uniform complete with white gloves. He was in Intelligence based in Trinidad.
I always think of him with his chin set in remembrance Love Michelle -Ann.
Thanks Michelle. Thanks for the service of courageous men and women like your dad and the traditions they have passed down.