As tomorrow is the last full day they will be on display, I took the early train to work and walked across London Bridge and up to the Tower. There were quite a few people there for the hour, just before 8 a.m., but nothing like the crowds that the last few weeks had seen.
I spent 40 minutes walking round it, wishing I had taken the time to bring my camera and taking a few snaps on my mobile which fail to do justice to the display. Much has been written about them, so I won't wax lyrical here. I am glad I finally got to see them. We read how many British and Colonial fatalities there were in the war, 888,246 and agree it is a large number. Seeing that many poppies really brought it home. Every single poppy represented the life of a young man, drafted into the army, living in hell in the trenches and then killed so the allied forces could gain a few feet.
It was incredibly to see and very poignant. Do we 'remember them'? I don't think so. If we did surely war pensioners, widows and the seriously injured wouldn't be relying on charities such as The British Legion and Help for Heroes. If we did, our defence budget would be a fraction of its current level as we avoided sending our troops to die on foreign soil for battles which achieve little and solve less. I was in the armed forces and am really glad I joined up. If I had a child, however, and they told me they wanted to enlist, I would talk them out of it, because one day we will run out of towers for all the poppies we are creating. I have a lot of sympathy with Sheila Hancock's suggestion that the poppies are mown down by a tank, "have the beautiful thing, and then destroy it" (article here). If we really want to 'remember them' we must remember the destruction.
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