Blog
Remembrance Day and 11.11.11 11:11:11
Written by Jimmy
This Friday is Remembrance Day, a unique Remembrance Day, where we celebrate on 11.11.11 at 11.11.11. Most of us won’t be around to witness this again. We are remembering the fallen of all wars and the families left behind with the loss.
In a democracy, we have to remember that we are responsible for these numbers – we vote in the politicians who in turn vote amongst themselves (sometimes) to send our children to war. We can argue about the right or wrong of each engagement and label the conflicts just of unjust. But we can’t deny who is ultimately responsible for decisions to send children into harm’s way. These are our decisions, not ‘their’ decision – it is us, not them. It is important we remember that on Friday and bring a little more wisdom to our leadership choices …
We must also never forget that the soldiers we put in harm’s way are not responsible for the wars we fight – the politicians are, and ultimately we are. One of the most harmful aspects of the Viet Nam war was we forgot this – those who were opposed to the war too often redirected their anger to the soldiers fighting the war. Those soldiers had the triple whammy of a) being in harm’s way, b) being in harm’s way in a war that was not universally supported by the American public and c) being blamed as individuals for fighting in the war. That was inexcusable; the good news is we have not made the same mistake again. Despite all the anti-war efforts over the Iraq war, protesters have been very careful to single out the serving soldiers as heroes, blameless for the choices of their leaders.
I am a military brat, raised on military bases, surrounded by military folk, and in a family where father, grandfather, four uncles were all high ranking officers in the Army or Air force. My grandfather was on the Missouri when the Japanese surrendered during WWII (he served directly under Douglas MacArthur as the head of Supply). I have been sadly aware that we’ve fought the last two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with relatively little support from the general public for the soldiers. At least in WWI and WWII, when there was mass mobilisation of military and civilian resources for the war effort, the popular culture of the time was profoundly shaped by the war. Now, our soldiers fight and suffer, while the popular culture remains far more concerned with the latest party and/or latest girlfriend. In some ways this is good news – we are not in the midst of a massive war. The bad news is for those that are serving in these wars, they are very real and very dangerous.
At Abubilla, we’ve tried to honor those serving now with what we sadly called our ‘war trilogy’, three songs that tried to capture three different perspectives of the horror of war, on those fighting, on those left behind. They fight into a horrible order – starting with the worries of the wife left behind, hoping her husband would survive, moving to the young soldier horribly wounded by an IED, and ending with the repatriation of the body home. We didn’t want to write these sings – they wrote themselves, jumping out of the pages of newspapers. We hope through these songs, we”ve done a little bit to remember our soldiers and to have a little of our culture (even if confined to the little world of Abubilla Music) be shaped by the wars we’ve voted these young soldiers to fight.
Here are the songs from the war trilogy: Remembrance by AbubillaMusic
A litte more on each:
- No Bells: Opening song on If I Were a Little Birdie. We tried to create a song that suggested WWII, but was set in the present. A young bride sits at home, gradually more and more isolated as she fears the ‘bells’ of her doorbell. She worries that they might be the military pastor, coming to tell her that her husband has been killed in Iraq (or Afghanistan).
- Roadside Comedy: From our first album, Six Months of Saturdays. We tried to write a song from the perspective of a soldier, seconds after he was hit by an IED. He had just been distributing candy to a set of children, who are now staring at the various body parts thrown across the unpaved road. The soldier drifts in and out throughout the song and by the end you’re not sure what ‘letting me go home’ means for him – released to death, rescued back to life.
- A Market Town: The fourth song on the fourth album, King Henry’s Tears. A song about repatriation and the wonderful market town that took accountability to make sure the soldiers were honoured.
We have turned the last of these songs into a video:
That’s it. And Dear Mason, RIP, my friend.
To make donations to the Royal British Legion, please check out their website at http://www.britishlegion.org.uk/
Jimmy