SURVEYING the pathetic stump of a gravestone in the tiny British cemetery in Miranshah, Susan Farrington noticed its similarity to another broken lump amid the rubble. Her companions, bearded tribesmen in what is now the headquarters of al-Qaeda on Pakistan’s north-west frontier, lugged the boulders together. With a satisfying clunk, they matched, restoring the stone’s inscription: “Captain Eustace Jotham, VC. 51st Sikhs and North Waziristan Militia. Killed in action 7 January 1915 at Khaisora”.
This was a prize for Ms Farrington, a historian of British colonial graves, known to her friends as “Cemetery Sue”. One of 47 British soldiers buried in the capital of North Waziristan, 31-year-old Jotham was awarded the Victoria Cross after being shot dead—possibly by ancestors of Ms Farrington’s companions—while trying to rescue an Indian comrade during an ambush. He was one of 17 men awarded Britain’s highest award for gallantry on the north-west frontier between 1877 and 1936—14 more than during a decade of fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq...
Their stories are not well-known. Fighting to perpetuate an imperial regime, the memory of which Britons are increasingly unlikely to celebrate, those who fought and fell in Britain’s colonial wars have never been solemnly remembered, unlike those who died in the two world wars.
When Britons first stood silent for two minutes, in November 1919, their mourning was acutely personal. The next day’s Manchester Guardian described “a silence which was almost pain”. As that grief faded, the particular ceded to the universal. Since 1945 Britain and most other Commonwealth countries have dedicated Remembrance Day to all their recent war dead.
http://www.economist.com/news/brita...e-improved-history-lesson-we-misremember-them
This was a prize for Ms Farrington, a historian of British colonial graves, known to her friends as “Cemetery Sue”. One of 47 British soldiers buried in the capital of North Waziristan, 31-year-old Jotham was awarded the Victoria Cross after being shot dead—possibly by ancestors of Ms Farrington’s companions—while trying to rescue an Indian comrade during an ambush. He was one of 17 men awarded Britain’s highest award for gallantry on the north-west frontier between 1877 and 1936—14 more than during a decade of fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq...
Their stories are not well-known. Fighting to perpetuate an imperial regime, the memory of which Britons are increasingly unlikely to celebrate, those who fought and fell in Britain’s colonial wars have never been solemnly remembered, unlike those who died in the two world wars.
When Britons first stood silent for two minutes, in November 1919, their mourning was acutely personal. The next day’s Manchester Guardian described “a silence which was almost pain”. As that grief faded, the particular ceded to the universal. Since 1945 Britain and most other Commonwealth countries have dedicated Remembrance Day to all their recent war dead.
http://www.economist.com/news/brita...e-improved-history-lesson-we-misremember-them
