Remember the living

Various political attempts to institute a national British day have failed, perhaps because Britain already has one. It is Armistice Day, and it is marked not by the waving of flags, or by the recitation of a national creed, but by keeping a silence in memory of those who sacrificed their lives for our country. Armistice Day, however, has always been about the living as well as the fallen. The poppies we wear are not just a commemoration of Flanders, but a sign that we support our soldiers in the battlefield today.

Since the Taleban were toppled from Kabul nine years ago, 180,000 servicemen and women have fought campaigns in either Iraq or Afghanistan. The fighting in Helmand has been more vicious than the military ever anticipated — the heaviest and most sustained that the British have endured since the Korean war. This has a human price, not simply the 521 soldiers who have died, or the 4,400 who have been hospitalised, or the 172 amputees.