For me this was the fourth consecutive year of participating in Platform-7’s events that take place on November 11th. After my initial, slightly perplexed participation with my Dead Rat Orchestra brothers at Brockley cemetery, this annually shifting and morphing event has become something of a tradition. One that for me takes all the confusion, mixed feeling and reflection that Remembrance Day brings and intensifies it somehow, a ritual that forces me to examine both my own feelings about the implications of war, and my own continually shifting place in this world.
This year was no different, and in many ways took these aspects and raised them to fever pitch. The over arching event focused on the use weapons directly against civilian populations in the form of the Zeppelin and V-rocket attacks on London during the First and Second World Wars respectively. This posed for me many questions. As someone who has an instinctive understanding and enjoyment of knowing about local history, and seeing how it has shaped the contemporary environment (social, political and physical), such a project would of course raise questions. Having grown up in a new town build after the second world war to accommodate the over spill from London, which resulted in part due to the massive destruction that had been wrought there, the history of this has threads in my own personal identity – even though I was born in 1980, the different communities of the town still reflected where they had arrived from after the war.
In addition, this would be the first year that I was not present in at the events in London; I would be undertaking a research to the Middle East, and which on 11th of November would see me in Beirut, Lebanon, researching contemporary music. In a country that has only recently encountered a war whose focused attentions were once again on the densely populated cities, these experiences are not only within living memory, but also within the memory of the youth.
Everyone I met had some experience of the war. Regardless of whether they had been present or not, the repeated wars of the region have impacted upon everyone here in some way. For example, the hotchpotch chaotic city infrastructure is just one aspect of how these recurring issues impact the city. As one local pointed out – between issues with official city authorities, and the chance of another war, city planning is not a massive priority. Everything is somehow makeshift, because certainty is in short supply.
The poignancy of this did not escape me, yet it was difficult to think how to bridge the subject with sensitivity – by November 11th. I would have been there for less than a week, and not having a complex understanding of history and politics of the region, it would be difficult to present something that was truly reflective. And how to position this so as to make it relevant to the events in London, to show the interconnection of experiences, that whilst in the UK we remember, here the experience is lived, and developing, that in warfare now more civilians are killed than military.
A chance meeting led to an interview. I cannot provide the specific details for reasons of the security of the person involved. This person undertakes humanitarian munitions disposal for an international agency. In layman terms a bomb disposal expert. He has been stationed in various post conflict countries, and has been doing this for a number of years. Around his apartment were examples of various munitions that he and his team (brothers and sisters as he referred to them) had disposed. The variety was astonishing: most were no larger than a pencil case (which he actually used several of them as) and in the case of cluster bombs, these were a little smaller than a tennis ball, and with their patterned surfaces (made to make the fragmentation on explosion easier) looked like elegant children’s toys, a reason why when they don’t explode on impact that children are one of their main victims. The contrast of purpose and appearance was shocking and hard to comprehend.
The shocking awareness for me came in the realisation of how warfare has developed since the V-rockets were hitting the UK. Cluster bombs, though banned from use in civilian populated areas continue to be used extensively, including weapons beyond their use by date, making their accuracy and detonation unreliable. Land mines are not deployed randomly – armies have accurate maps of where each device are placed, yet are reluctant to share such information openly in case they have to return to war. I could not help but think to myself – this buried act of aggression surely means the war continues, in the ground beneath our feet. Not acknowledging this only goes to further the suffering of the civilian populations.
It would be easy to hold up this man as a hero, as someone who is putting his life at risk for others safety. But it became clear in this interview that he was uncomfortable with any such notion. When questioned about how does he mentally prepare to undertake this work, his responses were simple – he simply cited his daily routine. It was not that he could not address this question – but what good would it do? There is no doubt that he has a set of skills and abilities that afford him to do his job, and to do it well. But what came across clearly is that he is truly a regular person who is making his way in the world. The humour that came through in the site of some of these weapons both demonstrated the everyday nature of this latent potential.
The Israeli rock mine, convincingly made to look exactly as it sounds, how it is meant to trick, the beauty of Italian mines, the rugged simplicity of the Russian devices, the efficient portability of American weaponry, references to the French and English mines that are still being uncovered immediately brought to presence the how nationalistic identities become embodied in the global implications of what is perceived to be a regional or local issue. What began in the last century – the globalisation of war, and its implications for civilians continues to spill and evolve in this.
I have no issue with remembering those that fought and served in the wars, whatever the motivations and forces behind this may have been. But for me this Remembrance Day truly moved beyond what I usually encounter, particularly in the UK mainstream media. Lest we forget – the face of war is now the face of the civilian.
Listen to the interview [here]
First Silent Cacophony dispatch from Daniel Merrill: Defusing Landmines: Firsthand Account From Lebanon for Silent Cacophony 2013
