remembrance in the UK

I always find remembrance day creepy. The red poppy runup, the 3 line whip for anyone appearing on TV to wear them, the small scattering of white peace poppies. The obligatory silence if you forget and end up in a public place at the wrong time.

Apparently soldiers disabled in the recent wars were not allowed to join the official procession as they were not "veterans"

Bob Worcester in  Je Me Souviens says that less people are dying in wars now. But what is a war? And isn't this just soldiers?

In WW1 90% of deaths were soldiers. In WW2 50%. Now it's more like 10%.

Not that I don't feel sorry for the soldiers who die and the people who loved them, but I'm made very uneasy by the tone of newspaper articles that imply soldiers should never be killed. Do army recruitment ads need a goverment health warning "soldiers can die as well as kill"? Is the ideal that our boys (and girls perhaps) just sit safely at home pressing red buttons?

The human and ecological devastation of war is vast. The military is responsible for 25% of transport carbon emissions (among other things)

I'm not wholly a pacifist though. I would have fought the nazis in WW2. In the army in the UK, in the resistance in europe or preferably in germany to stop them getting to power in the first place. But when do you know?