MEMORIES OF WAR

The radio today was talking about possible plans to commemorate the outbreak of WW1, 100 years on. Flags flying at half-mast, shops closed. A nation remembers.

I wonder how this will be achieved in practise?

There's a dislocation in this country as in many multinational communities between the ruling or government classes who maintain a sort of collective memory of major events and the mass who know little, remember less and probably think all such ceremonial - if that's what it's to be - is nothing to do with them.

And perhaps I do agree with accusations of militarism glorified even though we'll be attempting to remember the dead.

A few years ago, I visited Cambrai, the scene of the first major tank offensive of WW1 and there met a Frenchman who had found, after many years of research (and digging)a Mark V (?) tank - Matilda, I believe it was called. Having discovered it, he had then spent a lot of time looking for descendants of the crew of whom, at the time when the tank got hit by a shell, three survived (I think from a total of eight). I believed he'd found relatives for six of the eight but, as luck would have it, as we were talking he took a call on his mobile from Florida where, someone had unearthed (inappropriate word, I know) a cousin of the seventh crew member.

Philip Korzynski (the Frenchman) was exceptionally pleased and in his enthusiasm said something that resonated with me then and now which was that the dead were easy to find but the living kept moving around and therefore became harder to trace. ... The dead are easy to find.

And that's the thing about WW1. Who commemorated or commemorates the survivors? True they all got campaign medals but their names are not inscribed, with those of their comrades in arms, on the great or small monuments that dot northern France, Gallipoli, Belgium and many other locations. How did the survivors feel about surviving?

I have read accounts of many soldiers never truly recovering from survival - guilt that they hadn't many the ultimate sacrifice that so many others had. And I am not talking here about the wounded but of those who through some statistical chance, made it through with few external marks.

There are, in England a clutch of so-called 'fortunate villages', places noted for the fact they have no war memorials because none from that locale died in either the First or Second World Wars. How do those inhabitants feel on Remembrance Day, I wonder? How did they feel, say, in 1930?

I have often mused, and may well have reported these musings before in this blog, about how it must be to be a child growing up in one of the major areas of conflict - Ypres, for example. Ypres despite the fact that Pope John Paul II designated it a 'City of Peace', is entirely a city of war and death. You can't move around without coming across a memorial, a graveyard (and to my recollection there are some 600 cemeteries that surround the city) or indeed a shop selling memorabilia, 'trench art' and so on. Equally you can't move without meeting soldiers of all nationalities come to pay homage at the Menin Gate. And that ceremony, since the late 20s, and with an obvious gap for the second war, has been going on, daily, these past 80 plus years.

"At the setting of the sun and the rising of the moon, we will remember them".

I have been to the Menin Gate Last Post event on three or four occasions, and there's always a crowd, several hundred in fact. Even on Christmas Day? I wonder - perhaps there are more then.

But, to return to the point, how must it feel to be brought up in such circumstances where one has to be reverential at all turns to avoid offending someone? No sneaky fags behind an arch, no first kisses or quick fumbles in the park. There are no parks, really. All the green sward is occupied by headstones.

IMAGES FROM WW1 - Flanders and The Somme

From time to time, I go to visit the Flanders and northern French WW1 battlefields, graveyards and memorials. To be candid, I am never sure of my emotions on these occasions but I do feel these visits are in some way important - in terms of showing respect as much as anything else. A recent visit took place at the end of (a very wet April). Here are a few photographs: The grave of Noel Chavasse at Brandhoek New Military Cemetery in Belgium. Chavasse was the only winner of two VCs in WW1 (the second killed him). He was in the Medical Corps.

The second and third are images of Tyne Cot, just outside Ypres and, I believe, the largest Allied Cemetery in the world.

The fourth photograph is of the trenches which still criss-cross the landscape of Beaumont Hammel where the Essexes and the Newfoundlanders attacked well entreched German positions on the first day of the Battle of the Somme (1st July 1916). Beyond the trenches is the still remaining 'Danger Tree', only a hundred yards or so from the forward allied trenches. Few men, if any, who got past the Danger Tree that day, lived to tell the tale. At the end of the attack, the Canadian general in command was apparently criticized for his failure to gain ground. his reply was, "Dead men can't advance".

The final photograph is of the largest German cemetery - Neuville St Vaast - not far from Vimy Ridge in The Some. It contains 44,833 burials.

War Games

My sense that the English used to take nothing seriously and, moreover, considered war to be a game, has just been reinforced. And poignantly so on the eve of Remembrance Sunday. I was reading part of the demob letter received by a soldier in the Royal Engineers who fought at both the Somme and Ypres and some of whose effects are being sold on eBay.

"Now that the time has come for you to leave the Army and go back to civil life, I wish, both personally and officially, to thank you for the service which you have given.

"You take away with you the priceless knowledge that you have played a man's part in this great War for freedom and fair play. You will take away with you also the remembrances of your comrades, your pride in your Regiment, and your love for your country.

"You have played the game, go on playing it, and all will be well with the great Empire which you have helped to save.

"I wish you every prosperity and happiness."