Lest we forget

Today is Remembrance Sunday here in the UK – a day of remembering those who have fallen in conflicts. The tradition is to wear a poppy as a symbol of remembrance. The best known poppy colour is red, but some people wear purple poppies to remember animals that have served and fallen in human conflicts. 

In Britain alone around a million horses were taken to the trenches in First World War. Only 62,000 returned. The horses were taken from their owners to serve the war effort, no questions asked and no two ways about it. They had to endure the same horrors as their human counterparts, and perhaps even more, given that they were the beasts of burden used for transport and carrying all the heaviest items, and without a logical understanding of why they had ended up there. There were also many heroic dogs – and even pigeons – that served in both World Wars. Today, British troops still use dogs in Afganistan and other war zones as bomb detectors, for example.

War Horse (a book, a play and a movie) depicts the events of the First World War and a story of one horse through the horrors of WWI. I hear it's a good movie, but I still haven't been able to bring myself to watch it. I cried even when the 30-second movie trailer featured on TV last autumn.

So, today, when I was ambling across the countryside with Rainbow and saw all those happy families and walkers with their dogs on this gloriously sunny late-autumn day, I was thankful. Thankful for those who have given their lives to protect our way of life. Possibly also without all those people and animals I would not be sitting on my horse, in England, enjoying the freedom that I have. 

Pack horses carrying ammunition in Flanders, from 'The Horse and the War' by Captain Lionel Edwards, published by Country Life in 1918.

The Animals in War Memorial

Next time I pop in London, I will go and have a look at this memorial that is at Brook Gate, Park Lane (near Hyde Park)

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

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.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.