Past present: The dishonoured dead
We are the Dead.
Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
— John McCrae, in Flanders field
On July 28, 1914, when World War 1 began, it was welcomed by the European public who mistakenly thought that it would solve political and economic crises. They believed that the war would be over within a short span of time and the soldiers would be home in time to celebrate Christmas. However, it did not end as people expected but continued for more than four years, resulting in an immense loss of lives and hitherto unparalleled destruction. When it ended, a stunned and decimated Europe asked many questions. Writers, artists and filmmakers expressed their views on the horrors of the war. An interesting book titled Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning by Jay Winter dealt with a number of questions. After the war ended, soldiers would typically be buried where they fell on the battlefield, but some of the families of the dead soldiers preferred them to be brought home to be buried in their hometowns and villages. Their argument being that they did not like to leave the bodies in a foreign country among strangers. Instead, they preferred the bodies to rest in ancestral graveyards near their families. On the other hand, there were those who wanted the soldiers’ bodies to be buried along with those of their comrades in a common graveyard which would become a symbol of unity. A long debate between the government and the war-affected families continued over the issue. In the end France agreed to send back dead bodies of the soldiers to their native towns and villages where they were reburied. The American government also decided to shift and ship the dead bodies of the American soldiers to their hometowns. The British government could not implement it because of the heavy expenses it entailed so their dead soldiers remained in war cemeteries in the land where they had died.
A large number of soldiers from the subcontinent also lost their lives though not for their country, but for the colonial powers who ruled them. They remained unnoticed by their colonial masters and their sacrifices remained unacknowledged. In the memory of its dead soldiers, the British government built a memorial for unknown soldiers at Westminster Abbey. This model was later adopted by most of the European countries to commemorate the soldiers who died during the war. France built triumphal arches as a symbol of victory. Although the war was over, these governments wanted to keep the memory of war alive as a continuous process to remind people of the nation’s glory and success. All those countries that participated in the war built statues of the generals and soldiers to be erected in public spaces in recognition of their sacrifices. In Germany, the statue of Hindenburg; the general who fought in the battle and earned a reputation as great strategist, was made of iron. So impressed and awed were the Germans by his generalship, that they would purchase small replicas of it as mementos. While governments throughout Europe made efforts to promote war hysteria by building war memorials thereby creating sentiments of nationalism and patriotism, on the other hand there were writers and artists who wanted to highlight the horrors of the war and its meaninglessness. Käthe Kollwitz was an artist who lost her youngest son, Peter, on the battlefield in World War I in October 1914. He was buried in the German war cemetery in Belgium.
She visited the cemetery along with her husband, which had barbed wire boundaries that left just a small space for entrance. When they entered inside the cemetery, they found many graves of dead soldiers. Each grave had a plate with a number, the name of the soldier and a yellow wooden cross erected at the head of the grave. They found the grave of their son and stood in silence remembering the good days that they had spent together. It was the sad moment for parents who had lost their young son. She plucked three flowers from a nearby bush and placed them on the grave. By the end of the year she prepared drawings for a monument to Peter and his fallen comrades; but she destroyed the monument in 1919 and began again in 1925. The memorial, titled The Grieving Parents, was finally completed and placed in the Belgian cemetery of Roggevelde in 1932. Later, when Peter’s grave was moved to the nearby Vladslo German war cemetery, the statues were also moved. It shows how the war is seen by the common people as a personal loss and not as glory, which is a completely different viewpoint from that of the government. A French filmmaker screened a film showing that one night the dead soldiers came out from their graves and visited their towns and cities only to discover that nothing had changed and everything went on in the same way as when they were alive. Their wives and friends were enjoying music and danced with other male companions. Their questions as to why were they urged to die for a nation and a country without any cause and why did they lose their lives over nothing remain unanswered.
Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, September 21st, 2014