Remembrance Day : an Open Letter from a Tommy to His Majesty, King Charles III

(Fabien Fonfria paying tribute to Tommy, Edward Popple, at Thiepval Memorial, France)

Remembrance Day : an Open Letter from a Tommy to His Majesty, King Charles III,

to ask him not to stop the fight for the defence of the Earth

On this November 11, day of commemoration of World War I in France, in the United Kingdom and in many countries, here is an Open Letter, giving centre stage to young English soldier Edward Popple, who died during the battles of the Somme, on October 19, 1916, at the age of 20. An Open Letter to ask His Majesty, King Charles III, not to give up his fight for the preservation of the environment, and against Global warming, which he started decades ago. An Open Letter that I mailed from France to His Majesty, King Charles III, on October 18, 2022.

Letter from a Tommy

Letter from the Somme

To His Majesty The King, Charles III

October 18th, 2022

On September 8, I learnt that Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II passed away after one of the longest reigns in the United Kingdom. The shock, the pain, and a kind of melancholy seized me, like millions of my fellow countrymen from England, and beyond the United Kingdom, among other peoples of the Commonwealth, and of many other nations too, whatever their political system or their religion.

The national press, as in allied France, and everywhere in Europe, and across oceans and mountains, in the United States of America, in the Arab Monarchies, as well as in India and Japan, have all unanimously described a Queen who has fulfilled her duty for decades, doing much more than following protocol, embodying with perseverance, selflessness, and with simplicity and restraint, service for her country, and for her people.

For my part, if I can claim to speak, if I allow myself to send this letter, it is because I have a message to convey to Your Majesty, and also a request.

I don't know if I showed perseverance by enduring for weeks, in training and then in the trenches, the bites of the cold, the inexorable invasion of the mud, and the summer heat which increased the pestilences of decomposing corpses, like the ruthless guerrilla war fought with us by rats and lice.

I don't know if I was self-sacrificing when submitting to the invasion and encirclement of these new poisonous fumes, the poison gases that killed many of my surprised and foolhardy companions, like the innocent horses.

I don't know if I was brave when I leapt out of the trench when the horizon was studded with machine gun bullets and shells full of shrapnel, like so many harpoons that pierced so many of my companions.

I don't know if I showed cowardice by not joining a group of scout-soldiers, filibusters of no man's land, ruthless during missions of reconnaissance of enemy troops, and even of destruction of machine gun nests and cannon batteries, using grenades, pistols, bayonets and shovels.

I don't know if I restrained myself, and if I was simple, by not managing to explain, to begin to describe, to my family, the attacks and the fights, and even the exhausting life of all the days in the trenches.

I got involved in a moment of general enthusiasm, with "Pals" from my working-class neighbourhood, from Stockton-on-Tees, then forming the "Kitchener's Army", while all the newspapers called for mobilization, while the Pastor and even the owner of my pub called to go to France, to fight the Emperor of Germany, William II, such Prussian militarist hungry for territories and peoples to submit.

I found myself in the stream of my young training comrades, then in the fraternity of my unit, sometimes crossing paths with French and other troops from Allied countries and colonies, in a vast global movement to push back Prussian totalitarianism.

And, through unprecedented sacrifices, the forces of democracy and freedom have won the War.

In September 1939, a new and even more terrible Totalitarianism was once again formed in the heart of Europe. The Anglo-French alliance, embodied this time by the thunderous union of Prime Minister Winston Churchill and General de Gaulle, which fought for years, on many fronts, until the great Normandy landings supported by the French Resistance.

Today, another totalitarianism is launching in the conquest of the world. Global warming, the strangulation of biodiversity, chemical and biological disturbances, are all offensives produced by Mankind itself, which do much more than alter its living conditions, opening the door even to an unknown of despair and wars for hundreds of millions of human beings in the regions of the Globe that will be the hardest hit.

At her Coronation, on June 20, 1837, Queen Victoria saw England trigger the Industrial Revolution with the steam engine and coal mines, counting already more than 30,000 steam engines in industrial use, while the Earth's atmosphere had only 283.1 particles per million of carbon dioxide (CO2). Almost a hundred years later, in 1926, when Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II was born, the level of CO2 in the atmosphere was only at 306 ppm. When she died in September 2022, the CO2 level had reached 418.57 ppm: that is 112 points more! And it is this irresistible rise in CO2 which is responsible for heat peaks and other extreme climatic events, the acidification of the oceans, and the melting of the ice.

With one hundred years of harmfulness, Humanity must fear the gigantic inertia of the 397 billion tons of CO2 released by the USA since the year 1750 ! Followed by China with 214 billion tons, the former Soviet Union with 180, Germany with 90, the United Kingdom with 77, Japan with 58, India with 51, France with 37, Canada with 32, Poland with 27.

I didn't have the opportunity to reach an age that would have allowed me to look back on my life, and then have given me the intelligence and the strength to focus on the essentials. I died on October 19, 1916, crushed and dismantled by the unleashing of German artillery, in one of our offensives then.

I have no doubt that in the face of such Global warming totalitarianism, triggering the onslaught of heat waves, the unleashing of an artillery of huge storms and floods, the upsurge of invasive species, and the disappearance of local species. I have no doubt that in the face of the guerrilla war inflicted on biodiversity by chemical and medical industries, deeply assaulting and disrupting the soils, rivers and seas, and the forests and distant tropical environments.

Other troops, other soldiers leaping from the outposts, like new scout-soldiers, like these indigenous and environmental activists inside the forests, like these "whistleblowers" who break the secrecy and the collusion inside big companies, and such as these new "captains and generals", the scientists of the IPCC, are committing with perseverance and self-sacrificing to stop the climatic danger, the great chemical and medical disturbances, the assassination of fauna and flora, and the destruction of soils and landscapes by extractivism.

From Thiepval, where I live for eternity, under this low French sky, in this chalky ground, like two arms enclosing me and dragging me into the depths of a forgotten war, I am voicing a request that the Leaders, among those most influential and although bound by neutrality, find the strength to tear themselves away from their obligation of reserve, and defend a liveable Planet.

From the Somme, where the largest Commonwealth army in history gathered, where the greatest number of British, Australian, New Zealand and Canadian lives fell for freedom in that huge and terrible offensive of July 1916, throwing young lives against each other even from across oceans, I would like to suggest that similar forces, on the same globalised scale, come together to stop a focal point of the warming climatic Front.

Today, in the 21st Century, highly qualified British, Dutch and Congolese scientists have identified one of the central points of the offensive led by Global warming. The immense forests of the Congo Basin which spread over 1.78 million km2 are home to the largest complex of tropical peatlands in the world, over 145,500 km2, more than the surface of England, harbouring 30 billion tonnes of CO2, or the equivalent of 6 years of GHG emissions by the USA. These peat bogs and rain forests of the Congo Basin have been identified as one of the Planet's Climate Tipping Points, as a "new Somme", where the forces of Good must act to stop the Totalitarianism of this climate change that Mankind has itself triggered.

In support of my request, I kindly ask you to have a look at the documents provided to you by one of the stubborn Frenchmen, descendants of "poilus", whose eight great-grandfathers fought during the Great War. Including one dead in Verdun, and five wounded, on the Eastern Front as well as on the "Chemin des Dames" during the terrible offensive of April - May 1917, another fierce battle of this first globalised conflict.

Gathered in the book "The Congo Archipelago", Your Majesty will be able to verify the analyses carried out and the steps taken by Fabien Fonfria, in particular with regards to the Earthshot Prize, on May 4, 2020, and with the Government of Boris Johnson, on January 18, 2021.

Your Majesty, King Charles III,

please accept my highest respect.

Edward Popple

The Rifle Brigade

Died 19th October 1916, Age 20

18th Row, North End

Thiepval Anglo-French Memorial

The largest Commonwealth War Memorial in the world, with the engraved names of 73,367 Officers and Soldiers of the British Empire Armies, who fell during the battles of the Somme, but whose bodies were never found, annihilated by the destructive force of this war, and became forever "Known Unto God"

Now, that Your Majesty have become King, like a "Father of the Commonwealth", after the years 2006 and 2016 I hope, like all the Tommies in Thiepval, to see Your Majesty on November 11th, with the same resolute and austere stance, for the Remembrance Day, at the beginning of winter, when the immensity of the chalky plateau once again becomes that cold anvil on which hundreds of thousands of Commonwealth young lives were crushed by the German hammer...

Visiting France on Armistice Day, or every year on July 1, to commemorate the incredible sacrifices of the nations of the former British Empire during World War I, but also to recall the meaning of the gigantic efforts made by the peoples for their freedom, and for a safe life, would be loaded at these days with deep symbols, in many directions.