Helmand comes to Staffordshire

REMEMBRANCE DAY, the annual commemoration of Britain’s war dead on November 11th, will be especially poignant this year for two reasons. Britons will mark the centenary of the start of the first world war. Already, sombre crowds throng the Tower of London, the castle by the Thames in whose moat 888,246 ceramic poppies are being planted, one for each British or colonial military fatality in that conflict.

The country will also be remembering its most recent war: against the Taliban in Afghanistan. On October 27th the last British personnel were flown out of Camp Bastion in Helmand province; 453 of their compatriots had died during the 13-year deployment.

No formal memorial to them exists yet. After a final military vigil on October 9th the wall of names at Bastion was dismantled and transported back to Britain. This is unusual—memorials at the sites of foreign battles are typically permanent—but not entirely unprecedented. A wall of names at Basra air base in Iraq was taken down when British soldiers withdrew in 2009. It was rebuilt at the National Memorial Arboretum in the English county of Staffordshire.

The wall from Camp Bastion is heading there, too. It will be incorporated into a new memorial, the original brass plaques embedded in the structure behind engraved stone tablets better suited to the damp British weather. The dedication date is yet to be announced, but already foundations have been built on a patch of open lawn between the main existing memorial to Britain’s war dead and a grove of saplings.

As well as providing a focus for commemoration, the finished memorial will pose difficult questions about the war’s legacy. Fears that the Taliban might desecrate the wall in Helmand reportedly motivated the decision to bring it home. Afghanistan remains violent and anarchic, despite all the blood spilled.