Remembrance Nov 2025
Remembrance November 2025
Have you ever really thought about public war memorials – what they really mean, why we have them? The answer seems clear – to remember and honour the dead – but it’s not that simple.
Imagine you live in the period after the First world war. The country is grieving at personal, community and national levels. Many families have lost loved ones – often more than one family member. And also, deaths due to the war effort at home. Much of the country’s youth has gone. It’s hard to come to terms with. Out of the morass of emotion comes the idea to have public memorials. Personal memorials have always been around but public memorials to the fallen only really appeared after the outcry of the Crimean War, 60 years ago in the 1850’s when reporting with photographs from actual battle scenes became possible. Now, such an unparalleled loss of life requires something new – something on a broader scale.
But how do you create a memorial for so many? Honour and glory must be considered but they are not the major things you want to be remembered when your heart and that of your community is broken and love for a lost one burns ferociously inside you. And you know the type of war it was. Its truth. You’ve seen photos of the dreadful conditions, seen long lists of the dead and missing, seen art works depicting spoiled land, read the poetry of despair, seen broken men returning. And to make matters worse, the government has said that bodies will not be repatriated; your deceased loved ones will not come home but will lie in a foreign land. Many unidentified. Glory in victory is shown to be a messy, hollow thing. You are angry but proud and want something deeper than vague military glory but what?
Love of both individuals and country, of compassion and faith is perhaps the driving force behind the memorials you want. But actually, even so, sorting what is appropriate is hard. It takes time.
Today, we know that a myriad of types of memorial arose. But finding those first designs when so many meanings needed to be encompassed in them was extraordinarily difficult. Famous artists and architects were given the job and largely turned to the heritage of British, western art, and Christian art and symbolism.
Lutyens a famous architect, was tasked with designing many memorials, forty-four in total. Frequently seen are the tall cenotaphs consisting of white long-lasting stones with, on top, a representation of a dead soldier. The symbolism means that because of his sacrificial death he will be raised up and be close to heaven, …then we who are alive will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air[1]. In London at Whitehall, Lutyens cenotaph, 1920, is a site of national mourning much televised each November, while less well known but similar ones are elsewhere. In Rochdale, for instance, a Lutyens cenotaph stands close to the magnificent town hall which was an enlisting point. The theme of rising heavenward, into the clouds is also captured in England’s highest mountain. The tip of Scafell pike was given to the National Trust in 1919 as a war memorial.
More traditional symbolism is seen in the figures of St George, St Michael, Angels, personifications of victory and so on. Sometimes the past is mixed with the now. Stained glass window memorials can be seen with the traditional, crucified or resurrected Jesus at the top and figures below in WWI uniforms.
Many soldiers were simply unaccounted for, lost somewhere in a muddy expanse. Many bodies, if found remained unidentified. The only son of Rudyard Kipling, the author, was one such. He fell at the battle of Loos. Despite his grief, or maybe because of it, Kipling became responsible for the epithet engraved after the war on unidentified soldier’s grave stones – Known unto God. Three simple words of immense power and meaning. This idea culminates in the tomb of the unknown warrior in Westminster Abbey – a means of providing a focus for grief: the remains within, could be those of any of the unidentified.
After WW2, the previous war’s memorials had set a precedent and so the later ones often fell back on the comfortable, by-then established traditions, or were added to an earlier memorial. Local stained-glass window memorials, though some more artistically modern in style, still tended to follow the earlier established themes with love, sacrifice and faith still at the heart of things.
And the love goes on, but now more consideration is given to other faiths, genders and nationalities as befits a changing society. A memorial in Whitehall, London of 2005 commemorates women of WW2. Bronze coats and hats hang against a wall on hooks. They represent an empty presence, the ones who never came back, the separation of the mortal from the immortal. Love hanging on the hooks regardless of who or what they were.
Now, many years on from two world wars we have progressed on to a National Memorial Arboretum set in one hundred and fifty acres, remembering and celebrating selfless service to others, courage and sacrifice in all sorts of ways – not just war, and by all sorts of people. But with conflicts and threats both near and far being fought with changing technologies – how should we remember, honour those lost or gravely injured, and the love that will not die.
At this time of remembrance, the red poppy is a memorial. But that’s another story….
[1] The New Revised Standard Bible. 1Thessaloians 4:17