On Poppy Wearing

Thoughts on my family's WW2 history

“Poppy Field” by Guy Rose, 1910.

I have always been quite traditional about wearing a poppy. As soon as they appear in late October, I make sure to put one on, and I confess I have become the kind of person who finds it hard not to tut-tut when people appear on TV without one during the run-up to Remembrance Day. 

Whilst I recognise people’s freedom (and specifically, a Christian’s freedom) to not wear a poppy, I probably get into at least one friendly argument each year about the merits of doing so. My overwhelming feeling toward intentional non-poppy wearing is a sort of internal sigh of disappointment—not even necessarily in the person’s decision or arguments. It’s more the sense of a lost opportunity. I just deeply wish there were at least one simple, collective national act in which all could participate without agenda. Alas.

But poppy wearing feels different this year.  For me, at least.

In the last month, across the Western world, we have seen thousands of people pour onto the streets and university campuses and call, unironically and explicitly, for the death of Jews. This has not been a fringe element of these “protests”—it has been central to them; a feature, not a bug.

With this backdrop, Remembrance Day and its attendant poppy-wearing has become a more significant affair than in most years—as controversy around this week about today’s planned pro-Palestine (and inevitably pro-Hamas, given) march in London has demonstrated. 

Though I have my decided views on it, I am not here interested in litigating the question of whether the march should or should not have been allowed to happen. Rather, I want to reflect on the scattered personal reasons why, for me, wearing a poppy feels more important this year than ever.

***

My five year old daughter was obsessed with Nazis recently. You can blame our family holiday. Every year, we visit Alderney in the Channel Islands—where my Granny was from (my dad’s mother). The islands were occupied by the Nazis during World War Two. Jersey and Guernsey, being the larger islands, experienced occupied life much the same as people on the continent. 

Alderney, however, was small enough to evacuate, and so my Granny, aged just fifteen, was forced to leave her home behind when the church bell rang out its warning at ships approaching from France. The Nazis arrived to find the place deserted, and swiftly transformed it into an island fortress with a number of labour camps—one of which was specifically for Jews. To this day, the island remains covered in concrete German bunkers—most of which are just left to the elements, free to be explored, which is exactly what we do when we go on holiday there. 

Eventually, most of Alderney’s residents returned home—but much was never the same. Their home was unrecognisable; it had been gutted, desecrated. The islanders rebuilt in a remarkable way, no question, but those who remembered it before knew they had lost something forever. The little world my Granny grew up in was gone. Hitler had taken it from her, and spilled innocent Jewish blood on her island home whilst he was at it.

“The Odeon”, a prominent Nazi bunker on Alderney.