Should the demolition industry’s fallen not have a lasting monument…?
Like most right-minded British citizens, I am wearing a poppy today; I will mark Remembrance Sunday with an appropriate minute’s silence; in fact, I am planning to visit the spectacular poppy display at the Tower of London.
But for all this, I feel generationally disconnected from the First and Second World Wars.
My mother’s dad was in the Royal Air Force while my paternal grandfather was in the army, part of the Burma campaign. But, possibly because of my tender age, neither of my grandfathers liked to talk about the war or their part in it. Sadly, both men died before I got to talk to them about the war “man to man”. And so, like many of my generation, I have only third-party or Hollywood movie inspired and rose-tinted “memories” upon which to draw.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that the poignancy of Remembrance Sunday is in any way lost on me. In fact, as this year’s marked the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War, it gave me even more pause for thought.
The First World War became known as “the war to end all wars” not because it sounded good but because there was a genuine hope that mankind would never again repeat such an act of brutal self-destruction. Little did anyone know that just 21 years later – just long enough to have bred a new generation of soldiers and victims – we would do precisely that, only with ever more ingenious and efficacious methods of annihilation. Little did they know, even in our free-thinking modern world, there is scarcely a pocket of the planet that is not in conflict over land, resources or religion to this day. We may have put men on the moon but, when it comes to fighting, we remain as red in tooth and claw as our cave-dwelling ancient ancestors.
This set me thinking. The term “they will not be forgotten” was coined a century ago and is as resonant today as it was then. We cherish the memories of those brave soldiers as heroes.
Isn’t it strange, then, that in industry in general and demolition in particular, we all do our level best to move on and draw a veil over those killed in action in our field of endeavour?
There is no day to remember those men; no monument to their collective memory; no unifying symbol of remembrance and shared hope for a better future.
Just because these men laid down their lives for wife and family rather than King and country surely makes their passing no less tragic; makes them no less noble; makes their sacrifice no less great.
Could we not set aside one minute each year to remember them? Could we not rally behind a charitable symbol to help raise money for the families of those that might be killed on demolition sites in the future?
Sadly, I fear that the demolition industry is more cursed with realism and cynicism than were our forebears. We cannot and will not honour our fallen through an unspoken, collective shame; and because we recognise that further site deaths are as inevitable as future armed conflict.
