John Arthur Hogan was neither famous nor a celebrity. He was born in early 1910 in Bolton, Lancashire, the son of John Arthur Hogan senior (market porter), also born in Bolton, in 1881 and Annie Burns who was born in Liverpool in 1885. John Arthur Hogan senior (Hogan J A 6904 Private) joined the British army on 27th April 1915 and served in the 2nd Battalion of the Lancashire Fusiliers. Wounded, he died at Home on 7th March 1916 and is buried at Tonge Cemetery, Bolton. He was awarded the Victory Medal and British War Medal, at least one of them posthumously. In 1920 Annie Hogan married Reuben Lowe from Bolton and with whom she bore two children Annie and Vincent. Young John Hogan joined up in WWII and died in service towards the end of the war. This nondescript little history unmarked by spectacle or celebrity, a tale of working folk who came and went without making a single ripple on the sea of history as countless millions had before, might have ended there but for one thing: The red field poppy (papaver rhoeas). This is a hardy plant that grows in agricultural fields and wasteland. Its seeds can lie dormant in the earth for over 80 years before germinating, which usually is triggered by disturbance of the soil. Battlefields undergo considerable disturbance to say the least and during the horrors of WWI, were churned into seas of mud often strewn with fallen soldiers. The contrast between this horrendous sight and the following flush of poppies, seemingly ‘healing' the broken land, inspired Canadian volunteer medical officer Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae to write the poem “We Shall not Sleep”: “In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row…” An American teacher, Miss Moina Belle Michael was, on Saturday 9th November 1918, on duty for the Twenty-fifth Conference of the Overseas Y.M.C.A., which was being held at Hamilton Hall, Columbia University in New York City. She found time to read a copy of that month's issue of the “Ladies Home Journal” and, in her biography is quoted: “I discovered the marked page which carried Colonel John McCrae's poem, ‘We Shall Not Sleep', later named ‘In Flanders Fields'. It was vividly picturized (sic) - most strikingly illustrated in colour.” Colonel McCrae was wounded in May 1918 and died after three days in a military hospital on the French coast. On the eve of his death he allegedly said to his doctor “Tell them this. If ye break faith with us who die we shall not sleep”, whence derived the title of his poem. The verses were apparently sent anonymously to the English magazine ‘Punch', which published them under the title, “In Flanders' Fields”. Reading the poem was for Michael a life-changing experience. “It seemed as though the silent voices again were vocal, whispering, in sighs of anxiety unto anguish, ‘To you from failing hands we throw the Torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die we shall not sleep, though poppies grow in Flanders Fields'. Michael resolved then and there not to break the faith with the fallen. She decorated the YMCA with poppies and was soon asked for poppies by visitors when she told them of the flower's significance to her. Since then, the Flanders Fields Memorial Poppy has been taken up by hundreds of organizations, most especially as a way of fund raising by numerous veterans' organizations after the First World War. Over the succeeding 90 years, sales of the poppy have raised large amounts of money to help ex-servicemen and women in need of physical and mental welfare support. Remembrance Day is not a religious occasion but purely an act of respect and remembrance for all who have fallen in war be they military or civilian. The day in 1918 when hostilities ceased was originally named Armistice Day. It was a time when allied nations honoured the sacrifices made by all who fought and lost their lives during the First World War. At the end of the Second World War, the Australian and British governments renamed November 11 Remembrance Day to mark and remember all who have fallen in times of war. The ritual of observing one minute of silence was first proposed by Australian journalist Edward Honey in 1918 and continues to be universally practiced on Remembrance Day each year. It is observed around the world in the United Kingdom, Canada, France, South Africa, The United States of America, Bermuda, Ireland and New Zealand as well as in Australia. In many of these locations, two minutes of silence is observed at 11am. The red poppy and the act of remembrance it symbolises is for all the fallen, irrespective of colour, creed or nationality. As such, anyone can stop for a moment at the 11th minute of the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month for just one minute and remember for 60 seconds sacrifices made by millions of unknown soldiers and civilians to bring about peace and stability. Sometimes the sacrifice worked; other times it was in vain. In the Surrey town of Woking, stands the Sha Jehan Mosque, financed by a British Citizen and the 19th century Begum of Bophal, and given in perpetuity to the Muslim community of the UK by Queen Victoria. A key feature of the mosque property, but located half a mile away, is the Muslim cemetery, built expressly to house the fallen British Commonwealth Muslim soldiers who died in the service of the British Empire. The remains were disinterred some years ago because of local vandalism and moved with due religious observances to a Muslim-dedicated section of a nearby military cemetery. Many of this Muslim war dead in the cemetery fought in WWI – and are part of the whole that are recognised and remembered by the poppy. A more recent and spectacular example of the recognition of Muslim war dead is the Central London Mosque. It stands on a prime site in Regent's Park – and was given by George VII at the behest of Winston Churchill to the Muslims of Great Britain and the Commonwealth who fought and died in WWII. It belongs to the Muslim community in perpetuity. Writing in Emel magazine in 2009, Somaiya Khan-Piachaud and Ayman Khwaja put some scale on the multicultural composition of just WWI. “Of the 1.3 million Indians who constituted the volunteer force during the First World War, approximately 400,000 were Muslims. Historians put numbers of Indians close to 50,000 injured and 8,500 dead on the Western Front (France and Belgium). An estimated third to a half of these war-dead were Muslims, who fought and died alongside their fellow Hindu and Sikh countrymen. The bodies of many of these men were never found and their names are listed on the Menin Gate memorial.” Over 1.7 million men and women of the Commonwealth forces died during the two World Wars. There are 23,000 cemeteries, memorials and other locations worldwide where they are commemorated. It is perhaps fitting that the UK Consul General, a British Muslim from Dewsbury, just 60 kilometres from Bolton, will conduct this year's act of remembrance at the British Consulate in Jeddah, a testament of the non-sectarian nature of what the poppy represents. The millions of unknown soldiers that this simple act symbolises will be honoured, remembered and they will sleep on. One at least we can name, a simple ordinary man who died in Jeddah far from his home in Lancashire. On Remembrance Day, a wreath of poppies will be laid for the now not “unknown soldier” and for the millions of people of all races and religions who were first and foremost, living breathing people who died in and as the result of wars. The unremarkable but highly symbolic: Hogan, J A: T/232940, Private Soldier. — SG
