Stunning photos of London's new WWI memorial

[Admiral Yi]

Show me what you mean because what your type of memorial suggests sounds rather Soviet to me.

I've never seen a war memorial with anyone looking psyched. It's a mournful style. It acknowledges the suffering, struggle and death because that's what we remember. So with the Animals in War.

By not psyched I meant bummed out.  War memorials typically depict heroism, or more recently, grim determination.  Take the 54th Massachusetts ("Glory") memorial as an example.

http://www.masshist.org/online/54thregiment/essay.php?entry_id=528

They don't look as if they're thinking "this fucking sucks and the only reason I'm marching behind the cracker on the horse is because I will get a beating if I don't."

[Sheilbh]

I don't think those have been the tone of many British war memorials since WW1 to be honest. That seems very 19th century. I mean look at the Royal Artillery Memorial which has a soldier almost looking crucified:


Or this which is a typical image:

Similar from Lanarkshire:


Or the Liverpool cenotaph:


Not to mention of course the many memorials that aren't figurative at all. The Cenotaph, the Vietnam memorial or the RAF memorial at Runnymede where they leave a landing light on every night for all British and Commonwealth pilots who've not returned to base.

[Admiral Yi]

The middle two look very much like grim determination to me.  The last one is obviously mournful tribute.

I have no clue what they were thinking with the first one. 

[The Brain]

Americans are weird.

[Maladict]

The Korean war memorial in DC didn't strike me as particularly heroic or grimly determined.


edit: and the Afghanistan memorial in Kiev:

[Sheilbh]

I have no clue what they were thinking with the first one. 

British memory of WW1:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Great-War-Modern-Memory-Twenty-Fifth/dp/0195133315/ref=la_B000AQ6OIQ_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1415561857&sr=1-2

DULCE ET DECORUM EST

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Probably the one poem everyone educated in the UK has read. And if that's how we remember the men, how the animals? They've no choice whatsoever, but many times showed the sort of bravery and loyalty that only an animal could.

Of course it's wrong, or incomplete at least. Wilfred Owen's a pretty suspect poet whose less famous (and less good) work is heavily influenced by the Decadents and are poems that are alarmingly sensuous and sibillant about the corpses of young men. He was also someone who enjoyed war, liked killing Germans and could never wait to get back to his troops. But I suppose memory's a complicated thing.

Edit: I think basically since WW1 most British war memorials have been mournful tributes rather than monuments to victories. The few counter-examples like the Battle of Britain memorial look weird and inappropriate because of it. The reason is that in that period that's exactly what they were and it subsequently became our sort of national vernacular of war memorial: sorrowful and mournful, for remembrance of the dead and injured not the war.

But on that first one there are other statues which are more 'grim determination' but they're bookended not just by a Christ but by a corpse and then an empty uniform folded up. I think it's probably my favourite war memorial in London.

Edit: And of course the Ode of Remembrance which is the on read everywhere on Remembrance Sunday, again from WW1:

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.

[The Brain]

War art approved of by Americans:

[Admiral Yi]

Good one Brain. 

[Eddie Teach]

That is one limber soldier.

[CountDeMoney]

I have never seen a war memorial with humans depicted hating what they are doing.

These guys look psyched to you?

[Archy]

Like all Belgians & French I'll be at home tomorrow. Remembering the fallen.

[Brazen]

Going to try a quick dash to the Tower at lunchtime.

[Brazen]

Going to try a quick dash to the Tower at lunchtime.

That was a big nope. Thought I knew the back ways round, but Babylon has the place on lockdown.

It's now buggering up getting around London - my bus this morning was diverted too. They have my permission to begin dismantling.

[Syt]

After much debate, Austria now has a memorial commemorating deserters of the Wehrmacht. It's inscribed "all alone."

Though it might also be X-Files fan art. Trust no one!

[Zanza]

Why the fuck would they use English on a Wehrmacht deserters memorial? Is German someone not appropriate?