Rememberance

 Antique silk poppies, found via The Vintage Cottage HERE

Those who read regularly will know how growing up in Aldershot, Home of the British Army, has had a lasting effect on me, and encouraged my interest in military history. Today is such an important time for thought and reflection. It's the 93rd year of Remembrance day, and I hope that many will pause and think at 11 o'clock.

The First Two Minute Silence in London (11 November 1919) was reported in the Manchester Guardian on 12 November 1919:

"The first stroke of eleven produced a magical effect. The tram cars glided into stillness, motors ceased to cough and fume, and stopped dead, and the mighty-limbed dray horses hunched back upon their loads and stopped also, seeming to do it of their own volition. Someone took off his hat, and with a nervous hesitancy the rest of the men bowed their heads also. Here and there an old soldier could be detected slipping unconsciously into the posture of 'attention'. An elderly woman, not far away, wiped her eyes, and the man beside her looked white and stern. Everyone stood very still ... The hush deepened. It had spread over the whole city and become so pronounced as to impress one with a sense of audibility. It was a silence which was almost pain ... And the spirit of memory brooded over it all^"

If only the modern world showed the same decency.

Those who choose to wear the poppy carry a powerful symbol, the red flower that sprung from the bodies of ALL those who fell in those fields, not just British soldiers. There has been too many examples of negative journalism directed at wearing poppies this week. I find it utterly disgraceful that people could be so cruel, and mostly, it just shows how ridiculous people can be. I would probably care about it more if i thought they knew anything about history themselves.

Those men fought for us. Never mind if it was right or wrong, they went to those trenches no matter what they believed. How could we ever question remembering their sacrifice? For my age group particularly, it doesn't seem the done thing to be proudly wearing the poppy (i'm probably supposed to be off protesting somewhere and causing aggravation) but sorry, you will never change my mind on this one. We've lost our last remaining WW1 soldiers now, and I can't help worrying that we could ever loose our traditions too.

I think Britain should also be proud to have such a potent symbol of remembrance in The Tomb of the Unknown Warrior at Westminster Abbey which was inspired by an inscription on an anonymous grave in Armentieres, France, on a rough cross upon which was pencilled the words "An Unknown British Soldier". After seeing this grave in 1916, The Reverend David Railton wrote to the Dean of Westminster suggesting having a nationally recognised grave for an unknown soldier. As it was 1920, memories of the War was still raw, and Britain had a guilty concious about the thousands of bodies which lay unidentified in those foreign fields,

"Those parents and wives who had lost men to war didn't have anything tangible to grieve at, so the unknown warrior represented their loss" says Terry Charman, a historian at the Imperial War Museum.

The unknown warrior's body was chosen from a number of British servicemen exhumed from four battle areas - the Aisne, the Somme, Arras and Ypres. These remains were brought to the chapel at St Pol on the night of 7 November 1920, where the officer in charge of troops in France and Flanders, Brig Gen L J Wyatt, went with a Col Gell. Neither had any idea where the bodies, laid on stretchers and covered by union jacks, were from.

"The point was that it literally could have been anybody. It could have been an earl or a duke's son, or a labourer from South Africa. The idea really caught the public mood, as it was a very democratic thing that it could have been someone from any rank." 

Gen Wyatt selected one body - it has been suggested he may have been blindfolded while making his choice - and the two officers placed it in a plain coffin and sealed it. The other bodies were reburied.
The next day the dead soldier began the journey to his final resting place. The coffin was taken to Boulogne and placed inside another coffin, made of oak from Hampton Court and sent over from England. Its plate bore the inscription: "A British Warrior who fell in the Great War 1914-1918 for King and Country". This second coffin had a 16th Century sword, taken from King George V's private collection, fixed on top. A two minutes silence marked it's placement in Westminster Abbey.

"To have its own unknown warrior, for a country that sent troops to WWI, is part of its own national identity” Terry Charman

Ninety years on, the dead soldier continues to be honoured, by the public and royalty alike.
What's more, the symbolism of the act has been mirrored by many other countries around the world. Iraq, the United States, Germany and Poland are just some of those which have created their own memorials.
I hope you will take a moment today to consider how different the world would be now if those men hadn't gone. I know I always will. After visiting the battlegrounds myself and standing on that very same soil, I feel like I owe it to each and every one of them. No matter WHAT side of the line they fought on, we should remember them.

"In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved, and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

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."

John McCrae, May 1915 

Thanks for reading.

Katie

Rememberance

One of own my collected photographs, Unknown Soldier.

My family has a long history of being in the Army or Navy, and with my Grandparents both having great involvement in WW2, I have always been fascinated with the 1930s and 1940s. I am currently in the process of researching my families involvement, and my local war history, as I am considering a project based upon these experiences.

Living in Aldershot all my life (despite my constant moaning about it) has also provided me with some great military history and knowledge. During the recent years, it has become a ghost town, but in the 1920s-40's it was a thriving military town, with American, Canadian and Dutch soldiers all being stationed at the barracks.


Soldiers arriving at Aldershot Station, 1942.

During my time at Farnham College, we took a trip to the Western Front Battlefields, where we visited the graves of boys who attended the Farnham Boys Grammer school. One was only 15 when he died- Rifleman Valentine Joe Strudwick from Dorking in Surrey. He was one of the youngest British casualties of the Great War. The names of 5 more boys from Farnham could be found on the monument of The Somme Battlefields - M. Heywood, T.Hine, M. Hopwood, W. Jones and S. Spencer.

Continuing these local findings, there are 2 large bomb craters in Rowhill Copse (opposite my house) that were left from an air raid in July 1940. They can still be clearly seen today, and were recently featured on Channel 4's "Blitz Street" program.



Rowhill copse, Diane Sambrook

The first bomb fell on Surrey on the 30 June, 1940. From 30 June to 31 December 1940, 5,668 high explosive bombs were dropped on the Surrey area.

I plan to take a trip to the Aldershot Military Museum very soon, to go through their photographic archives. My Grandad's efforts in Burma are also featured in the Museum collection, so i feel it would definitely be a beneficial visit. My Grandparents never really talked about their experiences, and this seems to be common behaviour. How much do we really know? However, the few stories I did hear, have always stuck with me. They are so frightening, I can barely believe them to be real.

During our Farnham College Battlefields tour, one visit I vividly remember was to the Hindenburg Line, where the war poet Siegfried Sassoon managed a single handed capture of a trench. We learned this 'mission' was actually a suicide attempt. His own depression and despair provoked such manic courage, and his fearless nature gave him the nickname "Mad Jack" for his near-suicidal exploits.
Sassoon’s use of bitter sarcasm and graphic imagery make him one of the most moving and provocative of all the war poets, read "The Attack". This poem captures the terror of men caught in a mechanised war. Sassoon doesn't hold back on the horrifying details.


Sasoon's trench on the Hindenburg Line

Despite his best efforts, he survived the war, and made it back home. On his gravestone reads a prose from his great friend, and fellow poet, Wilfred Owen "My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity."

Wilfred Owen sought out Sassoon to teach him how to be a better poet, as he didn't have the self confidence to publish his poetry alone. Hard to believe such doubt. It only takes one read of "Dulce et Decorum est" to really put things into perspective.

For Rememberance day, Cambridge University Library is displaying their collection of Sasson's archive.


(Siegfried Sassoon's notebooks)

The Dug-out

Why do you lie with your legs ungainly huddled,
And one arm bent across your sullen, cold,
Exhausted face? It hurts my heart to watch you,
Deep-shadowed from the candle's guttering gold;
And you wonder why I shake you by the shoulder
Drowsy, you mumble and sigh and turn your head...
You are too young to fall asleep for ever;
And when you sleep you remind me of the dead

Sassoon became a pacifist, and upon the conclusion of his convalescence in the summer of 1917, he refused to return to war, penning a widely-published open letter, entitled “Finished with the War: A Soldier’s Declaration,” to his commanding officer. The letter concluded:

“I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops and I can no longer be a party to prolonging these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust. I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.

On behalf of those who are suffering now, I make this protest against the deception which is being practised upon them; also I believe it may help to destroy the callous complacency with which the majority of those at home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share and which they have not enough imagination to realise.”

If you are interested in reading more about Sassoon, Wilfred Owen and the lives of such other Great War Poets, i suggest 'Regeneration' by Pat Barker. Also, my favourite book of all time "Birdsong" by Sebastian Faulks.

I am continuing my research of this era, this is only a small insight, as i thought the timing was appropriate. This week, I hope you've taken a moment to remember those who have died in wars throughout history, and those who are out there fighting right now.

To finish, Phillip Larkin's "MCMXIV", one poem that captures the aftermath of such horror, the wondering of how can we ever recover from such devastation?

Those long uneven lines
Standing as patiently
As if they were stretched outside
The Oval or Villa Park,
The crowns of hats, the sun
On moustached archaic faces
Grinning as if it were all
An August Bank Holiday lark;

And the shut shops, the bleached
Established names on the sunblinds,
The farthings and sovereigns,
And dark-clothed children at play
Called after kings and queens,
The tin advertisements
For cocoa and twist, and the pubs
Wide open all day;

And the countryside not caring
The place-names all hazed over
With flowering grasses, and fields
Shadowing Domesday lines
Under wheats' restless silence;
The differently-dressed servants
With tiny rooms in huge houses,
The dust behind limousines;

Never such innocence,
Never before or since,
As changed itself to past
Without a word--the men
Leaving the gardens tidy,
The thousands of marriages
Lasting a little while longer:
Never such innocence again.


Thanks for reading.