Amongst other things, I collect postcards of The Cenotaph. I determined last year to thin out my military postcard collection, sold most of these on eBay for a huge profit and then, promptly started adding to my cenotaph collection. You can see some of them - along with the disappearing pram - HERE.
I was in Westminster the other day and as the sun was out, thought I'd take a walk along Whitehall. I thought that whilst I was there I'd see if I could pick up a modern postcard of the cenotaph. Could I find one? No I could not. There were plenty of postcards of Westminster, the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, the Millenium Wheel, Horse Guards, but nothing at all featuring the cenotaph.
I've always sought in particular, early photos of the cenotaph; the first temporary model and then the version which stands there today. However, it occurred to me, on my fruitless searches for a modern day cenotaph postcard, that it might not be a bad idea to try and find the most recent image on a published card. In other words, try and ascertain when it was that the cenotaph stopped being regarded with significance.
When the first temporary cenotaph was erected it quickly became a symbol for national mourning. It was unveiled in 1919 (see image above) and then later replaced by the cenotaph we see today, unveiled for a second time in November 1920. Just look at the banks of flowers around the cenotaph in the November 1920 image below.
Postcards of the cenotaph which appeared over the coming years were presumably saleable because for many people who had lost sons, fathers, brothers and husbands (not forgetting wives, sisters, mothers and daughters of course), the monument meant something. It was a focus for national mourning.
Today, sadly, the cenotaph is not saleable. The First World War has all but passed beyond living memory and the youngest veterans of World War Two are now all in their eighties. Tourists presumably aren't interested in an unsightly obelisk in the middle of the road and publishers of postcards apparently even less so.
When I was a child, EVERY ONE AND EVERYTHING stopped for 2 minutes at 11 a.m. on Remembrance Sunday. On a recent visit to London, I attended the service at Whitehall and was horrified to hear the traffic and horns blasting in the distance while those of us standing before the Cenotaph were silent and busy with out thoughts. I suspect that people are not reminded of what needs to be done on such a day, at such a time to remember those killed and who had no chance to grow up and have lives.
ReplyDeleteI live in the US where so many talk about patriotism and salute the flag at every opportunity, yet this is a land that mostly thinks of Veternas Day as a time to shop for bargins. On Veterans Day, there is a service at the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior at Arlington attended by the President and others, but which gets perhaps 20 seconds coverage on The Nightly News. Apparently the whole service was once shown in its entirity on television. Obviously in a country where television programmes need to be sponsored, the service has falled to secure support and so the showing of the whole service was dropped.
Who is it, I wonder, who makes the decision to 'forget' the fallen?