This coming Sunday is Remembrance Sunday in the UK and that inspired me to write this post. Denmark wasn’t always the small nation-state it is today. You might think that our Viking past has made the Danes a warrior people, but a number of unsuccessful wars have chipped away at its borders. Beating up on us so often has taught us the hard way that we should mind our own business, duck and make an effort not to be noticed when something unpleasant is happening around us. Except for being occupied by Germany during WW II, Denmark has not participated in any wars between 1864 and 1991 (The Gulf War). We only sent one small naval ship to that conflict and they where given orders to stay out of harms way.
Staying out of conflicts is what Danes did (I’m not implying that is a bad thing). We sent peacekeeping troops to various places around the world once the conflicts where over or at least that is how it used to be, and it gave me little preparation to the British and their attitude to war. I’m not suggesting the British like war and having soldiers returned in body bags, but having beaten Napoleon, and being on the winning side of both WW I and WW II they consider themselves quite good at it. They even have an “Imperial War Museum”. There is a feeling that despite the setbacks after WW II (losing its empire), it punches above its weight militarily.
Except for the possibility of the cold war turning hot, growing up in Denmark gave me the impression that being a soldier in Western Europe was pretty safe after WW II. So I was very surprised when I learnt that British soldiers have died in combat every year since WW II except for one.
Remembrance Sunday is a ceremony held each year on the Sunday closest to November 11th, the day when WW I ended and it commemorates the British soldiers that have died in conflicts around the world. Each year as we get close to remembrance Sunday, people buy and wear paper poppies to support the soldiers that have been injured and families that have lost someone who served as a soldier. Almost everyone wears a poppy, even the TV presenters. The poem “In Flanders Fields” refers to the poppies that grew on the graves of those who died on the battlefields of Flanders in WW I which is how the paper poppies of today have come to be used to remember those who have died in conflict.
