The Rest Is History - 118. End of the First World War & Remembrance

Episode Date: November 11, 2021

On the anniversary of the day the guns fell silent on the Western Front, we look at the last moments of the First World War – and how we remember them. How did Remembrance Day start? What are the stories behind the Cenotaph and the Unknown Warrior? Why do we wear poppies? And will we always remember the fallen - or is it time to forget? *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. All she saw was a merciless sea of black crosses, bearing little strips of stamped tin at all angles across their faces. She could distinguish no order or arrangement in their mass, nothing but a waist-high wilderness as of weeds stricken dead rushing at her. She went forward, moved to the left and the right hopelessly, wondering by what guidance she should ever come to her own. A great distance away there was a line of whiteness.

It proved to be a block of some two or three hundred graves, whose headstones had already been set, whose flowers were planted out, and whose new-sown grass showed green. Here she could see clear-cut letters at the ends of the rows, and referring to her slip, realised that it was not here she must look. That is towards the end of a short story called The Gardener by Rudyard Kipling. And it describes a woman called Helen Turrell, a spinster who has brought up her nephew, who then enlists in the First World War, dies. And that describes her going to one of the war cemeteries that is in the first world war dies and that describes her going to um one of the war cemeteries that is in the process of of being built uh and dominic i know that you're an admirer of that short story because it packs an incredible punch at the end doesn't it for reasons that i'm

not going to explain no people if you haven't read it it's available online it's it's quite short it's i think it's one of the great short stories ever written. I couldn't agree more, Tom. It's funny because you said to me you were going to go in on The Gardener, Kipling's short story from 1925, to start the podcast. And I had been thinking, would I mention The Gardener in the podcast? And I thought, I won't go into it in case Tom hasn't read it. And then I'll have to do all the carrying with it.

And I might start crying. And that would be really... Do you know, Tom, I read it and then i'll have to do all the carrying with it and i might start crying and that would be really do you know i i read it uh every every 11th do you remember i do i do i'm not i i don't think i've ever worn a poppy i'm not generally a great one for that kind of stuff right but i do read the gardener because i always want to read it and find out will i manage to read it without welling up at the end yeah Yeah. As yet, no. Yeah. It's such a, for people who think that Kipling is all the jungle book and sort of imperial jingoism, if you read this one short story

and it will only take you, it won't even take you an hour, it will utterly dispel everything you thought about Kipling. Because Kipling, of course, had lost his son, Tom, hadn't he? John, at Loose in 1915. And he was, Kipling had pulled strings to get him into the army and then lost his son and the grief to get him into the army and then lost

his son and the grief stayed with him yeah for the rest of his and the guilt I suppose to some extent for the rest of his life and and I think that we're talking about obviously Remembrance Day um the honesty it's all that kind of stuff uh because today the day that this episode is going out is the 11th of November um and one of the challenges, obviously, for people was to deal with the scale of the loss and the scale of the grief. And I think often in terms of literature, it's a struggle for people.

But I think the Kipling story is, I think it's the greatest work of literature specifically on this topic. I think there are two great works of literature, Tom, aren't there? There's Kipling's short story and there's a new book, I think. Isn't there? Oh, yes. Sorry.

Dominic. God, here I am. Here I am dwelling on Kipling, who's been long dead. But of course, the top historian has written. Enough of the dead. Yes. Let's cut to the living. Dominic, I gather you have a new book out on the first

world war i do indeed it's one of my adventures in time series about the first of all and i promise we won't talk about it too much is it very moving so i think i found it quite moving to write it actually i found it genuinely moving and um the first world war is like all wars it's a mosaic of of you know incredibly sort of stirring and emotive individual stories. And writing it for children, I was particularly conscious of that because, of course, the First World War is presented to children as this sort of abyss of suffering. So, yeah, but enough of that.

So you can obviously buy it for your children, or you should for Christmas. But we want to talk more broadly, don't we, about the end of the war and how it was remembered. So why don't we, before we get into the remembrance itself, just start, why don't we start sort of on the last day. So, yeah. It's a kind of sequel to the Gary Sheffield episode.

Yeah. About the Western Front. So the Germans have been, they've launched their great gamble, haven't they? And they've been pushed back and everything's falling apart in Germany. The German revolution has started and they've already sent envoys to the compiain forest to talk to the allies uh and so it's monday the 11th of november we could start i guess we could start at 5 19 in the morning which is when the envoys they've heard sos, right? Yeah, they're politicians. There's, I think, a couple of military guys. They have been sort of sent.

They have the... The regime is collapsing behind them. So the Kaiser has fled. The Kaiser fled on Saturday night, Sunday morning. To the Netherlands. So it's now Monday. They've discovered, they see from the French Royal Women's newspapers

that the Kaiser has abdicated and Germany is in revolution. They've been given a few days to consider the Allies' terms, and they basically decide they have no choice but to accept them. So they gather in Marshal Foch's carriage in this forest, in this forest clearing, very bleary-eyed, just round about dawn, before dawn, I think, and they end up signing the terms that basically say hostilities will cease at 11th of November, i.e. on Monday,

at 11 o'clock. They have to give a time, obviously, a random time. And so they choose it for the symmetry of it. Yeah, well, also because that will give time for the news to spread across the front. 11, 11, 11. I mean, that's... Yeah, of course. Well, it's not the 11th minute of the 11th hour.

It's just at 11 o'clock. 11 o'clock? Yeah. Of the 11th day. Of the 11th hour. Yeah, I suppose of the 11th. Yeah. So the weird thing is that the fighting obviously goes on to 11.

Because the French and the Americans in particular don't trust the Germans, right? Well, also there's an inbuilt ratchet, isn't there? I mean, if you're frightened, if you think there's a possibility that the enemy will carry on fighting, then you'll carry on fighting. So it depends slightly where you are on the front. But basically in those few hours, more than 2,000 men are killed. I mean, it's extraordinary to think. Imagine dying at 10 o'clock. And people do die at kind of 10 45 and so

on so the last the last uh british competent is george ellison from leeds i looked up on wikipedia absolutely top quality research going on here but and but the thing that's interesting about him yeah is that that he had fought at Mons in 1914. Yeah. So he'd done the retreat from Mons. Right to the beginning. He'd fought on the Western Front. He'd survived it.

He survived it. And then he got killed outside Mons. So he'd returned to Mons on the push an hour and a half. That's gutting, isn't it? I mean, there's some really heartbreaking stories. So there's a French guy, Augustine trebuchon and he's a messenger he's from the sort of southwest of france down by the long dock or something and at 10 45 he's given a note by his kind of commanding officer um he says go and give this note to the troops and tell them you know only 15 minutes to go as soon as the clock ticks'll have, there's going to be food for them at the back.

We'll have a big meal. Trebuchon goes off and he's killed. And the note is in his hand. He was shot or something. There's another guy from, there's a guy from Canada, this man called George Price. He's searching houses by a Belgian canal and he's shot by a German sniper.

And with just minutes minutes minutes to go a nurse nurses come and run to his aid and he dies two minutes before the ceasefire and then the very last is this Henry Gunter yes he's a he's only got himself to blame it's a terrible story so Henry Gunter is a is from Baltimore he's um he had been sergeant, but he's been demoted for bad behavior. I can't remember exactly what the bad behavior was. He's been demoted, and he's desperate to get promoted before the ceasefire, to get his stripes back, basically. So he decides to charge a German machine gun post,

and the clock is literally ticking down the seconds. And everybody shouts, stop, stop, you're mad. Yeah. His own stop, stop. You're mad. Yeah. His own side say, stop the Germans wave him away and say, stop, you know, stop coming.

There's only seconds left. What are you doing? And he just keeps coming because he thinks he'll be promoted and they, they shoot him. And apparently he, he lands in the mud as the, the clocks are. Yeah.

As the bells are sounding. Well, the other story about as the bells are sounding. Well, the other story about as the bells are sounding is the Wilfred Owen story, which I think is probably a little bit apocryphal. So Wilfred Owen has been killed just before, so a few days earlier. But the story goes that it's as the bells are ringing,

and I think Shrewsbury... And cheers, everyone's cheering. Yeah, that the postman turns up, opens the gate and comes and knocks on the door and gives his parents the telegram. I think that story has too much symmetry to be true, but it does give you a sense of the sort of, that even amid the celebration,

there is this sense of terrible tragedy. Right. And so in the wake of the ceasefire, the armistice, the end of the war, there then comes the question of how do you mark it? How do you commemorate it? Even on the day, people think, I mean. Well, but even before it, I mean, we'll come to that. But I mean, now to us, it seems obvious that you would remember it, that you would commemorate it, that it would be something that you'd kind of swathe in ritual, I suppose.

Yeah. But actually, it's not obvious. Because if you look at the previous great conflict, the Napoleonic Wars, Battle of Waterloo or whatever, it's not commemorated in that way at all. and in fact you know people are going over and yorkshire kind of fertilizer manufacturers are going over and shoveling up the bones which is why there are no bones to be found here at water i think they found i think they found a soldier in 2012 or something and they were digging a car park ready for the uh they're on our fields in yorkshire is that what you're saying they've all they've they all got cleat they've so basically so there was a there was some germans would complain that that british fertilizer companies were kind of going across all the battlefields of europe scooping up all the bones and taking them grinding them up and taking

them back and selling them to farmers in yorkshire that's a that's a nation of shopkeepers for you there isn't it i mean one man's backers and others commercial fertilizing opportunity and the teeth yeah so even in the american civil war uh people are harvesting teeth uh and uh you know and within you know byron goes when he when he um you know he leaves england and goes on his grand tour across europe he stops off at waterloo um he's a tourist and he's one of a large number of tourists who are visiting it. Yeah. And there is this, it seems to us, incredibly hard-nosed attitude towards casualties.

But I'm guessing that the reason why there's such a difference is that armies in the First World War are conscripted armies. And so there's a sense that they're citizen armies. And so it's a nation in arms. So that's kind of radically different, isn it that is different i think there had been a change before that i think the victorian cult of death is obviously part of it the victorian obsession with memorialization and their rituals of mourning and so on um which does mark them out as different from their predecessors i think there had been there have been memorials to the

dead of the crimea and then particularly the big precedent is the Boer War. So there are still a lot of Boer War memorials, you know, in sort of market towns and things across England. So again, there's a sense at that point, I think, that war is becoming both – casualties in war are becoming shocking and something worth noting, but also that they're becoming individual you know so that you want your the names recorded i mean that's definitely the case of the first world war that people did not want the instinct was well we'll just have what we had in previous wars which

is mass graves so the officers will be will be different but the men will just be in mass graves and there's a general feeling i think that that is intolerable, that so many people have joined up. Some have been conscripted. Some have been volunteers before that. But they're ordinary blokes. They're not professional soldiers, and they deserve better. And that all are equal in death. Well, that's a really interesting thing, isn't it?

And that's so – do you know all about this, about the War Graves Commission and all this? Because this is a fascinating story. Well, I know that plans for it get set up before the end of the war, say in 1917, I think. Yeah, I mean, going back- It's Fabian Ware, isn't it? So Fabian Ware is a director of the Rio Tinto Zinc Company. So if you're a conspiracy theorist in the 60s,

you believed that they were the kind of part of the Illuminati or something. Anyway, he's too old to fight in the war, but he goes and I think he's involved with the red cross and immediately i think in 1914 he says well what are we gonna it's killing so many people what are we gonna do and he puts a lot of he talks to sort of bigwigs back home puts a lot of pressure on the government and they set up a graves registration commission and that becomes the imperial war graves commission and that's in 1917 isn't it exactly they have a report what we're going to do.

And they say everybody should be, what is it? Whatever their military rank or position of civil life, everybody should have equal treatment in their graves. Now that's quite controversial at the time because a lot of richer families thought that they should have the right to bring their, bring the dead back and bury them in the manorial estate or something. And that's a key decision, isn't it?

That everyone will be buried where they died. Yeah, where they died. Same grave. Same grave design. Right. And so when this gets the green light, the Prince of Wales, the future Edward VIII, becomes the president of it.

They get in, basically kind of amazing people get involved in it. So they have Britain's absolute top architects. Lutyens, the great imperial architect. Yeah, Lutyens and Herbert Baker, both of whom worked on New Delhi. Yeah. Reginald Blomfield, who redesigned Chequers. Yeah. Fabulous moustache.

I mean, you can't have an imperial committee without a moustache. There's many moustaches on this committee. But also, we've already mentioned Kipling. But Kipling is the kind of literary advisor. He's the guy who comes up with the phrases. We could argue, I think reasonably, that Kipling is the author of Remembrance, that he created the Remembrance, many of the Remembrance rituals that we – and the sort of – I guess the language of Remembrance, isn't it? Because it's Kipling who comes up with the idea. So they have this brilliant idea.

Soldier of the Great War, known unto God. Known unto God. He does that. But also if you go to any major War wargraves cemetery have you been to some of the world war one um i have yeah cemeteries they're very moving aren't they they're oddly moving i i i've never had any desire to go and see them at all i always felt incredibly unsentimental about them um and then we went to eep because that's where my grand my grandfather didn't die there but he got wounded and invalided out so we went there there, see the Menem Gate and everything.

And they are kind of overwhelming. Yeah. And you go there and they have this thing called, what's it called? The Stone of Remembrance, which is this kind of classic kind of Lutyens construction, an abstract, almost slightly modernist stone. And on that, you have Kipling's line that he took from Ecclesiasticus,

their names liveth forevermore. Can I pick up on that? Go on. In a way that will annoy you. Don't. Okay, I'm going to. So in the main cemeteries, there are two kind of commanding images.

So you have the Stone of Remembrance and you have a Cross of Sacrifice. So Reginald Blomfield designed the Cross of Sacrifice with his moustache. Oh, I know where you're going with this. Oh goodness sake so the stone of remembrance yes um is modeled on the the lineaments of the of the parthenon yeah and i think that that lurking behind a lot of this is uh ancient greece okay i didn't think you were going there so i'm delighted can i elaborate on that do do because they surprised me i thought it was all going to be about christianity we'll we'll be coming to that

i can assure you oh no so a lot of this is an age where the um the kind of people who are organizing remembrance committees and all that kind of stuff are absolutely steeped in ancient Greece, Greek literature and so on. During the war, London buses have extracts from Pericles' funeral oration on the side. And this funeral oration is given by Pericles in the second year of the Peloponnesian War. And it's an annual ritual where somebody gives a talk to commemorate the dead. And preceding this, Thucydides says that what the Athenians do is that they gather up the bones, the bodies and the bones of those who've died in battle. They bring them back to Athens and they lay them in a kind of tent outside Athens. And they organize them up into the 10 tribes.

Every Athenian citizen belongs to one of 10 tribes. And then after three days, they all get put into 10 coffins and carried away and buried. But there is an 11th coffin. And this coffin, Thucydides says, is empty to commemorate those. They don't know who they are, who the bodies are. So there's a strong element there of kind of the idea that citizen soldiers who've died fighting for their country should be properly commemorated. There's a sense that you have to incorporate those who are missing, those who are unknown, those whose identities have been lost. And it's kind of woven into the idea that the Parthenon itself and the Periclean rebuilding

of the Acropolis after the Persians had burnt it in 480 BC, for a long while it was left empty as a kind of war memorial, and then Pericles redevelops it. But again, it's, you know, all the kind of the famous buildings that people will kind of, apart from the most famous, it's designed as a memorial to the dead of Marathon and to the great victory at Salamis. And I'm sure that that must be a part of what is, you know, if there are people listening who know more about this than me, I'd be very interested. But it must, I think it must be kind of at the very least, even if it's subconsciously playing on the mind. But also the fact, the cenotaph, Tom. So the stone of remembrance that you get in the cemeteries is not dissimilar, I'm not totally dissimilar in design from the cenotaph. And the cenotaph, the very word of it, what is it? Kenetaphion.

Yes, an empty tomb. An empty tomb. So, I mean, the fact that clearly is there in i mean not even in the subconscious it must be there consciously an idea of looking back to the greeks it is and so you have you do have that kind of greek element but then of course you have the question of what do you do about christianity yeah they have huge arguments about that cross don't they they're massive some people say we shouldn't have a cross at all, which is interesting because they wouldn't have said that 100 years earlier. Exactly. But actually, Britain remains overwhelmingly a Christian country. And the First World War had served to kind of massively revive Christianity as something that

people felt that channeled people's grief, that kind of gave an explanation for why people had died where the dead had gone and so the christian element of remembrance is actually incredibly important as well uh and i think is focused on the figure of the unknown warrior yes perhaps we should come to after a break do you think uh well let's just before let's do the unknown warriors kind of 1920 but so before we do, we've got a little bit of time where we can talk about what happened in 1919. Okay, yes. So 1919, you might think that the first sort of big moment of remembrance happens a year on, but it actually doesn't. It happens about six months later, six or seven months. So they have a huge parade in London in, I think, was it June, July 1919?

And what's interesting about that is it reminds you that actually it's not all doom and gloom and kind of grief. There's a lot of celebration as well. So in, although soldiers themselves, when the war ended, were often, they said they marked it with silence. They didn't know what to think. They just felt empty. But actually in London and Paris and so on on there's great orgies of kind of celebration and they have this big parade that's when the senator first appears when it's first built in wood um in london they have this huge parade of kind of veterans and so on and then

they have a big blowout banquet in november 1919 king george v and the president of the french republic and they actually get a bit of criticism for that in the papers they say you know should we be having market yeah is this the way to market because what what they very notably don't do i mean you know say in paris is stick up something like the arc de triomphe no they don't they don't so there's no triumphalist architecture anywhere no that's quite interesting and the other thing that they they bring in as well which i think it chimes with what the lack of triumphalism is the two-minute silence so that is new that has never been done before do you know where that comes from no it comes from south africa interestingly so the guy who was the mayor of cape town had lost his son and um they used to fire at the

noonday gun at signal hill at cape town at noon, which I assume was a ritual left over from kind of passing ships or something. And they say, well, why don't we have a two minute silence? They start off with a three minute silence, actually. And the mayor himself says, it's too long. Everyone got bored and started shuffling around and fidgeting. So let's have a two minute silence. Reuters then reported it. People in Britain started to copy it.

And George V publishes a sort of public declaration a few days before the 11th of November 1919 in which he says, there's this great innovation. We should all do it. And everybody does do it. And everything stops on the 11th. And the two minutes is rigorously sort of respected um and then ever

since you know that's the idea of the two-minute silence has become well it's so it's interesting that that this guy in south africa lost a son as kipling lost a son and you do get the sense that the the rituals that emerge in the wake of the war are powered by a personal sense of grief from yeah the people who are inspiring this and it's it's the the rituals that kind of chime with a broader sense of people wanting to to market that that work don't you think it's it's it's there's an element maybe subconscious of guilt as well that yeah absolutely a father who sent his son with with Kipling yeah I think there's a huge element of that and I think um yeah it's also interesting that they're so sacred aren't they you were talking about this sort of when I was thinking about Athens the two

minute silence is sacred you interrupt it and people think I mean that's an incredibly profane thing to do like desecrating the cenotaph don't you think I, those are the most sacred things in modern British culture, to some extent. Well, I think that is really interesting. And I think it's something that we could talk about, because I think in a way, although it's kind of rooted a lot of it in Christian ritual, it has come to replace Christian ritual. And it does kind of provide, I suppose, a vent for sentiments and feelings that in general we you know contemporary british society doesn't provide a vent for which is why i think it is it's both so important and also kind of on the margin so contested so i think i think we should

we should take a break here and when we come back we should look at the um the fallen warrior which is an amazing story um and then look at how that kind of, the legacy of that into the present day. And poppies. We haven't talked about poppies. We'll definitely talk about poppies. All right. See you after the break. I'm Marina Hyde.

And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com.

So Tom, this Sunday, the event of the season, 5pm, Leicester Square in London, the Odeon, the rest is history live. There are only a few days left now. Are you excited? Are you nervous? The glittering heart of London's West End. What a glittering occasion it will be. You and me looking at the relationship between history and cinema. Can't wait for it. You haven't said if you're excited or you're nervous. Of course, I'm excited and nervous. Yeah, we're both. While simultaneously't wait for it. You haven't said if you're excited or you're nervous. Of course. Well, I'm excited and nervous.

Yeah, we're both. While simultaneously being full of confidence. That's a lot. But in a very modest way, I think. I know it's going to be a great show because we've talked it out and we've worked it all out. It's going to be fabulous. And there are very few tickets left.

Very, very few. I'm not just saying that. Last time there were very few, but now there are really very very few yeah even fewer so um hurry hurry while stocks last and you can find it by looking for podicon on ticketmaster p-o-d-i-c-o-n or just search for rest is history live and as don't we said i'm both excited nervous and full of confidence i'm all of those things too. See you then. We'll see you there. Welcome back to The Rest Is History.

We're talking about remembrance, and in particular, remembering the end of the First World War, which has become the template for all rituals of remembrance. So Tom, you said you wanted to talk about The Unknown Warrior, which I know you know a lot about. And it is a great story. Why wouldn't you know a lot about it? So I didn't really know anything about it

until yesterday. And then I had an absolutely horrendous journey back from Salisbury, where of course there'd been this train accident. I had to get back to London. So there were a lot of rail replacement bus services. So I found a fantastic uh podcast which i think went out last summer called the the um the unknown warrior uh little

20 minute ones i highly recommend it if you are interested so everything i'm going to say now derives from that so apologies i can't believe you're advertising rival podcasts on that well you know i i literally would know nothing about the subject unless I'd listened to every single episode they did. It's an amazing story. Yeah. And the idea for it seems to have originated perhaps with Thucydides. Perhaps I gather that something similar to this was done in your favourite war, the Schleswig-Holstein war. I didn't know that. Yeah, apparently.

But the guy who's chiefly behind it is this remarkable man who I'd never heard of, but who is just what a hero. The Reverend David Railton. Yeah, he's very impressive. A very impressive man.

Vicar, signs up, becomes a kind of vicar in the army. Wins the MC, never talks about it. His son then got the MC in the Second World War, never talked about it. And his grandson suddenly discovered that his dad and his grandfather had both won the MC and never talked about it. That's a lot of pressure on the grandson. It's a kind of example of modesty that both of us i think yeah would find hard to compute um and he had uh so obviously had a very heroic war record um he was involved in um clearing a a wood of corpses so he'd kind of had to go in and and pick up bits of flesh and body. I mean, just horrible.

And the story that he told late in his life was that he'd seen a rough white cross with the words to an unknown British soldier on it. That's right. So Armentier, that's the place. Yeah. Apparently, this may be a slightly false memory. Oh, that's a bit disappointing. Well, you built him up and then you tear him down. No, no, I'm not saying that he lied.

It's a bit of British media. No, I think that, you know, the memory plays tricks and you can, whatever. I mean, we don't know. But there was an earlier account in which he didn't mention this. But anyway, so he dwells on this idea that there should be, you know, a body of an unknown soldier should be brought back to London and should be placed in Westminster Abbey. And he sits on this and dwells on this. And I hadn't realised that it's only in the summer

of 1920 that he writes to the Dean of Westminster with this proposal. Dean of Westminster goes, that's a brilliant idea. Lloyd George goes, that's a brilliant idea. George V goes, not sure about that. Yeah, that's extraordinary, isn't it the george fifth is so skeptical about it i think it's just because he's so unimaginative yeah and he you know he's he's only interested in stamp collecting and creasing his trousers on the wrong side so he doesn't have any you know he can't conceive of how this would be a very romantic and moving gesture and so essentially it's it all has to be organized within a few weeks but they do it, it's an amazing story and they organise it amazingly and this is where basically the whole superstructure of Remembrance

comes to be worked out within a few weeks so they get four bodies don't they, one from Eep one from Arras, one from the Battle of the Aene and one from the Somme and they cover the meat, they're all in sort of quite plain coffins and they're covered with the Union Jack and then they get a Brigadier General to come in and he closes his eyes and they cover the meat. They're all in sort of quite plain coffins and they're covered with the Union Jack.

And then they get a Brigadier General to come in and he closes his eyes and puts his hand on one of the coffins. Brigadier General Wyatt. Yeah. Who's in command of British troops in France. That's right. And he puts his hand on one of them and then the others are taken away. The other three get taken away.

Yeah. And then it's like a game show. It is, yes. The winner proceeds to the next round where he's put into a new coffin. Well, no, the winner's won. Yeah. You know, there is no further round. He's hit the bullseye.

Fair enough. He's put in a new coffin made of the, I didn't think we'd be. It's a coffin. It's a coffin. The coffin is made of wood from Hampton Court. Hampton Court Palace of Oak. Yeah, of which Oak. Hampton Court Palace. And a Yeah, Hampton Court Palace.

And a sword, a crusader's sword from the Tower of London. I know, very good. Put on the top and he's buried in the earth of France. And, you know, we're slightly kind of background of Anglo-French hostility at the moment over fish. But this story is a reminder of how close and intimate the bonds between France and Britain were. That this unknown warrior, British soldier, is buried in French soil, gets escorted by a French escort to Boulogne. Marshal Foch, who was in command of the Allied forces in 1918, salutes it. And it gets taken on to HMS Verdun, which has been named after the Great Battle.

The whole children of the town are there. Everybody. Everybody. The entire town is there to see it. I mean, an incredibly moving moment. As you say, HMS Verdun. I mean, it couldn't be more aptly named. The battle is the Somme to the French, their equivalent of this huge sacrifice.

And then it ends up even the even the the when it gets to london the internment in westminster abbey is incredibly moving the whole the whole thing i mean the i think the only thing that you compare it to is diana's funeral oh my god but the no but in terms of in terms of of kind of unexpected impact of a funeral yeah so there are you know people who live through it will remember the vast numbers of crowds that came out for Diana's funeral, but the crowds for this were much, much larger. And they were gathering at Dover as HMS Verdun landed.

It lined the rail route from Dover to Victoria. At Victoria, there's a guard comes and stands vigil over it overnight. And apparently every year still to this day between platform 8 and 9 a vigil is held. Is that right? Apparently so, yes. That's a lovely detail, I didn't know that.

And then it gets taken and corteged through down the Mall, down Whitehall, past the Cenotaph and this is when Lutch in Cenotaph is unveiled. Yeah. And it gets taken into Westminster Abbey. And the whole thing has been organised by Lord Curzon. A very superior person.

A very superior person. But who in this case plays a blinder because he's the Foreign Secretary. He's the former Viceroy of India. He's kind of a tremendously stiff person, but has an absolutely brilliant idea for ritual and all that kind of stuff. And he makes sure that it's escorted in past an escort of everyone who's won the VC. And he's made sure that it's not just kind of the great and the good. It's not just kind of people from high society who are at Westminster Abbey.

But he specifies that it should be women who've lost their husbands and their sons. Yeah, I think that's such a lovely incredibly moving detail isn't it very very moving and and then it's visited isn't it after the ceremony it is visited by millions of people go to pay their respects yeah um and you can sort of understand it actually because it's the perfect symbol for a kind of democratic war. Because it could be anyone. Yeah, exactly. Absolutely. So that's 1920.

But also, Dominic, on the topic of royalty and the unknown warrior, I gather that when Elizabeth Bowes Lyon married the future George VI, she laid her bouquet on the tomb of the unknown warrior to commemorate her brother who died at the Battle of Loos but also isn't that a brilliant a brilliantly loaded PR gesture because that's

you know she and her husband were going to be all about self-sacrifice and duty and responsibility in contrast to his older brother, who's just narcissistic shit. Yes. Yes. Even though he's the president of the Imperial War Graves Commission. Yes.

But apparently this is now what royal brides always do. Yeah, they do. Didn't Kate Middleton do this on her wedding day? Yes, I think so. Yes, I think so. So that's 1920 that happens. And then 1921 is when you have the creation of the british legion and this is douglas haig who most people if they

haven't been persuaded by gary sheffield's last appearance on the podcast they will think of douglas haig as the butcher of the psalm and all this kind of thing but douglas haig actually is incredibly um has has his he's beloved of lots of servicemen because of all his efforts after the war to kind of raise money for injured servicemen and so on in the British Legion. And I think he was a pallbearer for the unknown warrior. Yes, I think he was. Exactly. So I think there are six million men who served in the war. And this is a time of enormous unemployment in the early 1920s.

So they haven't come back to a kind of home's fit for heroes as they were promised and and david david railton that the guy who comes up with the idea for the unknown warrior i mean he he goes back and he commits himself to looking to caring for the absolute poorest among the that you know veterans who've come back you've absolutely lost everything so you you built them up you're torn down then you built it back up again tom that's what this podcast is all about. Yeah. It's an emotional rollercoaster. So the British Legion is what gives rise to, obviously,

the best-known symbol of remembrance, which lots of people will be wearing maybe even as they listen to this podcast, which is the poppy, which Tom Holland says he doesn't wear. So I'm not trying to get you cancelled, Tom, honestly. No, not at all. I can see the Daily Mail feature now. And who would write that? I can't imagine. They'd probably have to write it under...

They'd probably have to write it under... If it's written by A.N.Other, you know, you'll know who it is. Anon. An anonymous top historian speaks out. Anyway, right, so the poppy. You're laughing about poppies. No, I'm not. You also are cruising towards the end. No, so the poppy. You're laughing about poppies. No, I'm not. You also are cruising towards the end.

No, I'm absolutely not. So the poppy comes from a poem, a lovely poem by a guy called John McRae, another very admirable chap. So he was a doctor. He's a Canadian. He's a lieutenant colonel. He loses a very close friend at the Second Battle of Ypres in the spring of 1915, which is the first

battle which the Germans used gas and he writes this famous poem that basically I think pretty much everybody in Britain now does in schools in Flanders Fields in Flanders Fields the poppies blow between the crosses row on row etc etc and this poem inspires it's a really interesting story because it inspires two people kind of simultaneously so one of them is an American academic who's a professor at the university of georgia this is a bit of a halloween story actually about importing a american tradition and she was called moina michael and she had what she worked with disabled american servicemen um and i think new york and she basically comes up with the idea of the poppy she thinks you know she decides to go she goes to get herself a poppy and she says i'll wear it every day to remember those who have fallen

and she comes up with this idea about you know you could sell them and raise money for veterans and at the same time by a complete coincidence there's a french woman called anna guerra who had been born in france she was in britain the war broke out, but then she moved to the United States and was fundraising for disabled servicemen. And she comes up with the idea at the same time. And she comes back to Britain and she goes and has a meeting with the British Legion. And she says, I've got this great idea for a poppy.

You know, the red Flanders fields, the poppies grew there. Everybody knows about it. And she says, I will pay to manufacture a million poppies in France. And Earl Hague says, that's a great idea. And the Legion said, well, we'll make another 8 million here in Britain. So they sell 9 million in the first year. Tells you what a massive hit it was.

And they were originally just made of kind of fabric. They're very simple. But they say on them, on one side it says British Legion Remembrance Day, and on the other it says made by the women and children in the devastated areas of France. So there's your Anglo-French amity again, Tom. And it raises shed loads of money, tons of money, and becomes this huge phenomenon that people wear.

They buy the poppies and they and they wear them every year so they build a factory in um aylesford i don't actually know where aylesford is but i'm just reading that out and they build another factory haig's wife opens a factory in scotland which i think still makes poppies in scotland to this day so you know it's a nice story but then of course you have the white poppy which some people just now that this is where the controversy kind of comes in, because even then in the 1920s and early 1930s, some people say, I don't want to wear the poppy because I think it glorifies war. And so sort of people who are in Britain. Yeah, it's people. It's the Cooperative Women's Guild. So it's early 30s, left-leaning, kind of well-meaning,

kind of sort of what the playwright Michael Frank calls the kind of herbivorous tendency in Britain, kind of what we would now think of as slightly sort of Guardian reading-ish. And it's linked at this point to pacifism. So the 1930s is this huge at this point to pacifism. So the 1930s is this huge upsurge in pacifism, the Peace Pledge Union,

and it's all about, so this is, this is never again. So this is different from the 20s because I don't think people were really all about never again

so much in the 20s. In the 20s, it was more, slightly more a muted, hurrah, we won. It was very sad, but we won and we're very pleased

but in the 1930s that has morphed into a kind of never again war is hell war is hell and i think partly obviously because the specter of war is now approaching so people are more sort of jittery about war yes i i and i think that what's interesting about all the um tomb of the warrior the poppies the the graves and everything and the remembrance is that it it it constructs a kind of you know saying earlier a kind of post-christian way of marking well really are you remember our podcast with ronald hutton and he's talking about how um this time of year has always been commemorated as as a to, you know, you're leaving the summer, you're going into the winter, that this gets Christianized as a celebration to commemorate the dead. The Reformation gets rid of that.

In the 20th century, that kind of process of dechristianization, people forget Christian rituals. And yet what you see is, I i guess because of the coincidence of the fact that remembrance day is happening when it does that actually with halloween with guy forks with remembrance day you have this kind of effectively you know 12 day festival of the dead and remembrance day is the most important of those i think in, in terms of remembering. Well, it's the only one that's sacred, isn't it? Yeah, because it properly channels ideas of the sacred. But I think that the fact that it's kind of complemented by Halloween, people are nervous of the sacred, and people are afraid of where the sacred might lead.

And I guess that the kind of nervousness about Remembrance Day in the 30s is a kind of expression of a reticence about Remembrance Day that endures into the present. Yeah. Although it's an argument, isn't it, that Remembrance Day has become, it's not just the sacred, it's become sentimentalized now in a way that it wasn't maybe in the 1920s and 30s. And it's been sentimentalized.

Well, so we all talk about the Second World War as well, because that, of course, so the Second World War then adds fuel to the requirement for remembrance and changes the date interestingly so they no longer want to have it on the 11th because it will interrupt war production if that's a weekday so they say we'll do it only on sundays and then after the war they move permanently i think the bishop the archbishop of westminster actually suggests to the atlee government that they're thinking, what should we do for both world wars? And he says, why don't we have it on Sunday? So that's why you have this slightly confusing thing in Britain,

which I have to admit, until I looked into this, I always found a bit bewildering, that you basically have two remembrance days, one on the 11th, when sometimes you have the two-minute silence and things stop, particularly when you have the centenary of the first world war. And then you have the church services. And then you have the church services on the Sunday. But it's the Sunday that's the kind of designated day now isn't it and that's

for both world wars but you see again i think that that that reflects this the way in which the ritual has kind of emerged from christian ceremony and it's kind of contested is there's always you know so that that kind of you know is it a greek is it a christian way of commemorating the dead it's always been there yeah but also it's it a Greek, is it a Christian way of commemorating the dead? It's always been there. Yeah. But also it's become... So we had a lot of questions. For example, Josh Glancy, who writes for the Sunday Times, says, is there a time when it'll cease to be dominated by the First World War? And lots of people have asked that about the World Wars and Remembrance. Already, the World Wars, I think, I mean, there has been a sense of the World Wars seeding some of their control of Remembrance't there i mean when you read um official kind

of british legion websites and things now they mentioned the world wars but not as much as they would have done 50 years ago and now it's kind of the victims of war generally i think it's sort of slightly more amorphous well i think i mean in a way i i think way, I think its prominence has risen over the past few decades. It definitely has since the 90s. I don't particularly remember it as a big thing when I was young. So I think it was the Second World War commemorations, wasn't it? In the 1990s. In the 1990s. 90s and then i think um because uh britain's been involved in a number of uh you know afghanistan

and iraq um it's become a way of keeping um the military in the public eye i think there's definitely an element of injured veterans and there's also a very mundane explanation which is that the world wars feature quite heavily on the national curriculum so primary a lot of primary schools will do elements of the two world wars and remembrance day becomes a really important kind of teaching tool for them yeah and then we've had the 100th anniversary so yeah and the 100th anniversary so there's sort of i agree i think there are deep cultural reasons it's become a national it's become certain second world war has become part of our national mythology but also they're almost quite mundane kind of institutional reasons why it's become

well and this question from mark woodhouse is remembrance day the most religious day of the year um i i think another aspect of it is that that britain has become a multicultural society and so purely christian days of celebration no longer unite the nation in quite the way they did even christmas um whereas remembrance day you know people from across the Commonwealth they do and of course so much emphasis now on you know Sikh soldiers in World War I or something you can do it in

to use the jargon an inclusive way and I think it's you know and it's telling that the iconography of the First World War cemeteries are multi-faith the stones are designed that you can have a cross on if you're Christian, but say Jewish.

And I thought it was amazing that when the Nazis occupied Belgium... They didn't smash them all up. Didn't smash them up, left them alone. No, that is interesting, isn't it? And apparently when he got retaken, the last post was played at the Menin Gate, even as fighting was going on. Is that right?

Because of course they play the last post at the Menin Gate every day, don't they? Except during the war. Right. Fascinating. And then the moment they got back in, they started playing it again. They started doing it straight away. Yeah.

So we've got a couple of questions actually about Remembrance Day, which I think are really... So Barry Grogan has a question about the poppy. And he says, has it turned into more of a cultural symbol as opposed to a symbol of remembrance? And I think he's onto something because the poppy – your choice of whether or not to wear a poppy and what colour poppy you wear, it's now become a very kind of politicised. Yeah, it is a culture. It is a bit of a cultural thing. It's not a cultural. I don't think it is quite – I think it – I don't think it's it i don't think it's kind of signifier it is a signifier of sorts but you see i think it

not even as much as say masks face masks not even as much as face a white poppy is signified though you can't know that yeah white poppy definitely um you see a white poppy wearing you think he probably doesn't read the daily express well i think i mean one of the things i think also that's happened is that there has become a kind of nervousness about specifically national commemorations so having having kind of bigged up the idea of remembrance days as as as a national celebration but they do have i mean in france and belgium it's still it's called armistice day and the united states is called veterans day so we're not you. We one of the things that probably is unique about us is that we like to think we're unique and we can be very sort of parochial in our self-flagellation. But other people have Remembrance Day ceremonies. I mean, there's nothing unusual about it. there has become, you know, at certain levels, a nervousness about any sense that there should be something specific

about national mourning. Yeah, you should just mourn. You should mourn everybody who dies. Yeah, well, this is what football clubs now do, interestingly. They now say the victims of all wars in their Remembrance Day. And you sort of think, what, all wars? A hundred years war? Yeah. The first Balkan war? mean come on yeah um now Michael Wood has a really good question um as you would

expect from Michael Wood friend of the show great historian in his own right um he says when and how will we deliberately forget these wars so we can move on and actually that's a really good question so you know in the 24th century will people still be remembering the first world war you'd have to say no well he he says i'm not sure i'm not i'm not sure it's uh michael wood the historian oh really another michael wood maybe i'm a friend of the show that also we do we have two michael wood friends of the show don't we it's true um it happened he puts in brackets as we did after the napoleonic wars etc but the difference is that you know as we said at the beginning of the show, we didn't commemorate the Napoleonic Wars in this way.

Yeah. I mean, this is new. For the 20th century, this is something that had not been done before. But when would you stop talking about the World Wars, Tom? Or do you think never? Well, I don't know, because we don't have any guidance you know we've invented a ritual we've invented a ritual when did the greeks stop talking about the persian wars i mean they never stopped talking about it no they never they never always going on about it but that's slightly

different isn't it it's the rituals so the the rituals of um a commemoration that in which pericli gave his speech ended when a when Athens ceased to be an independent democracy. Right. Because it's bound up with civic identity. for people to contemplate death and bereavement and suffering in a way that in general our public cultural life does not provide opportunities for we've become squeamish about it in a way that previous generations didn't and i think that the decline of institutional religion has left a kind of gap in the market that the remembrance day celebrations fills i'm sure that's true i also think there's another dimension which is that it it has become a celebration of the idea of sacrifice

and duty and so on. Do you not think? So there's this slight idea of they gave their lives for their country, especially for people who think about it in terms of particularly the First and Second World Wars, that it's about people who put the collective, the greater good above individual. I'm not sure about that.

I do. I think it's absolutely about that. Because you think of the Blackadder stuff, you think about the... But people aren't thinking about that when Remembrance Day, are they? I think the idea of stiff upper lips, of service, of duty, of responsibility,

of signing up to do your bit for king and country, I don't think that... I think large... Lots and lots of people hold that very dear, but I think lots and lots of people see it as faintly risible. Risible? Yeah, I do. Tom Holland.

You spent too much time promoting that Guardian Saturday section. And you spent too long in Middle England. I do think, you know, ever since the 60s, the idea of duty and responsibility have been the subject of satire and mockery. I'm noting all this down, by the way, for that article about your refusal to wear the poppy. By top and on historian.

Yeah. I don't refuse to wear the poppy. I just never have. Photographed on the streets of Brixton today, the 11th of November. Tom Holland goes to buy milk while defiantly refusing. No, I'll be reading The Gardener. Oh, yeah, very good. Of course you will.

Yeah. Right. I think we've talked ourselves to the brink of cancellation. But of cancelling each other. We're going to be cancelled by rival constituencies. Yeah, exactly. That's as it should be. brink of cancellation but of canceling each other which is my rival constituency yeah exactly um yeah that's as it should be so yes i think remembrance day i agree with you i think it is a sacred i think it does have a sacred meaning you see that in people's reaction when the cenotaph is attacked uh far more than i mean we've talked about the statue of churchill but far more

than the statue of churchill the sanitar feels like the ones the one sacred space on this island actually in a weird way isn't it yeah i think it's the apart from the stonehenge tunnel apart from that yes no i think you're right i think that that um i don't want to say it but i mean i know I... What were you going to say? I was going to say... You're going to say it now? Well, I was going to say that of all the symbols of Britain, that is the one that I think its destruction would most wound. And I'm kind of hesitant to say it in case this then inspires some terrorist group or something to blow it up but I think it

it has a kind of emotional resonance that because it's for everyone and because it is empty and because it's not about great men it's about the entirety of the nation but it's not even ultimately about the nation it's about the fact that death and suffering happens. Yeah. That, yeah, it does have a kind of sacred quality, I think.

Yeah, I agree with you completely, Tom. I think it's a place of grief and of contemplation and all these kinds of things. And that does give it a status well beyond anything else. When we did our walk looking at the statues, you said that was the one place that people were stopping, were standing by, that there were wreaths there. And so it still has its power.

It absolutely does. A century on. Right. We're off to go and write our rival articles. But actually, we're really off to go. You have actually inspired me, Tom. I am going to go and reread The Gardener. And I think everybody else should.

It's a brilliant short story. We started with it. We'll end with it. And you have to read it right to the end because it's not until the end that you get the full punch. All right. We will see you next time. Thanks for listening.

Goodbye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com.