Remembrance

by Sharon Baynham

There is no box at the back of the wardrobe. No shrine to our family history where I can pull out a faded photograph of a young man in uniform, look into his eyes, full of hope and confidence, as yet unravaged by war. I cannot brush dust from medals awarded for bravery or valour, or rub my fingers over metal uniform buttons dented by bullets.

So how do I remember WW1?
My knowledge of it is lean, stick thin. I can tell you the dates and I can tell you it was triggered by the assassination of some archduke somewhere, but that is it. I am an embarrassment of ignorance. But with the bar set so low, I can only gain knowledge not lose it, and the internet is a lovely thing.
I learn of medical innovations that are still with us today. The first blood bank is established on the Western Front in 1917. Analysis of ‘shell-shock’ as a psychological distress is the forerunner for many approaches used today in PTSD.

I learn of a silent movie, The Battle of the Somme. In 1916 half of the population of Britain flocks to see it. Comparatively speaking it is bigger than Star Wars.  The cost of bullets fired in one 24 hour period amounts to £3,871,000.  To finance the war the Government turns to printing money, borrowing and taxes. It issues War Bonds and then later changes the terms so they do not have to be repaid. Even now, 125,000 still exist, passed down through generations.

But what surprises me most is the tunnels. I think of WW1 as taking place above ground but much of it is underground. Tunnellers detonate explosives, under enemy trenches deep in No Man’s Land. Many of them are miners who have enlisted for the infantry in an attempt to escape a life spent underground, only to live there again. An explosion along the Messines Ridge in West Flanders is so loud Lloyd George hears it in Downing Street, 150 miles away.

I am reminded of Wilfred Owen’s poem Strange Meeting, set in a ‘profound dull tunnel, long since scooped’. Owen’s tunnel is not one dug by miners.

When as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands as if to bless,
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall;
By his dead smile, I knew we stood in Hell.

This is when I connect with the war, when I hear the words of Owen and other writers who were there. Words from those who lived in the dark underbelly of humanity for a while, enduring the depravity that ripped bodies and crippled minds. This is why Owen writes letters that talk of a ‘seventh hell’, of wanting to ‘break down and let myself drown in the water that was now slowly rising over my knees’.

They are all dead now. The memories are gone, wiped from the slate.  
But it is their broken voices, their words straining with grief that take me by the hand and walk me through Flanders Field. With them I look down on the broken bodies scattered across the mud. I cover their hands with mine as they press on wounds to staunch blood. I lie with them in the trenches as they close their eyes and let the waters of despair close over them.  

They lead me to La Boiselle. In the gloaming they take me to the entrance to 1915 X Incline and we descend into a damp rank hell-hole. We pass sandbag walls, and rusted gas lamps, long forgotten.  Our feet grind old cigarette butts into the ground. We stop and they turn my face to the wall. I see scratched markings and together we trace the letters.

If in this place you are detained, don’t look around you all in vain,
but cast your net and you shall find, that every cloud is silver lined…Still.
I do not know the names of the villages, the roads or the rivers. I do not know the regiments or the dates. My blood did not spill there. I did not hang in agony from barbed wire. I was not widowed or orphaned by it.  

I have not lived the war but I live the aftermath; the hope, the opportunity and the freedom. I cannot live their life, or die their death. But I can remember through their words and I can live the future that they gave me.

Sources: Strange Meeting by Wilfred OwenLetters from Wilfred OwenPoem on the wall of tunnel 1915 X Incline, La BoiselleWW1 resources online at bbc.co.uk and 1914.org