Laid Bare

I remember, on New Year's Day, saying to the In-Charge: 'I wonder if anyone, a hundred years ago, knew what kind of year they were welcoming in?'
For most people, it was probably a New Year like any other - Auld Lang Syne, the coal and the bread on the doorstep, a few jars too many...
When I said it, both of us sort of  - paused - hindsight being what it is. The In-Charge numbers war heroes amongst his ancestors, a father and son who died together at Passchendaele in 1917, so his genetic memory (as it were) of the First World War runs very deep.

Having studied various aspects of that war at college, and, more recently and far more poignantly, having visited Ypres, Tyne Cot and many of the other Passchendaele war cemeteries to mark the 90th anniversary of that terrible battle, it runs pretty deep with me too.

There were no graves for the In-Charge's relatives to visit, just the knowledge that the bodies of their beloved men had been lost forever in Flanders mud. But we found their names - at long last - carved on the great wall at Tyne Cot, where 12,000 soldiers are buried and another 35,000 have their names inscribed on the wall, because they too were never found. It was a naked moment for us all - a raw, vulnerable sensation of being laid bare, feeling the loss of them, the waste, all over again, despite the years, despite the generations.

I say us, because our son was there as well. He had been asked to make a speech on that memorable occasion. The Queen was present, and Prince Philip, and the Queen of the Belgians (their King was in hospital at the time), and representatives of all the Allied armies, and Governments. It amounted to a lot of Big White Chiefs and scrambled egg on shoulders.

I am lucky enough to have a DVD of my son's speech, as one of the many cameramen present sent it to me afterwards - a kindness I greatly appreciated. I also found it on YouTube recently, to my surprise, and if you'd like to watch it, you can, via this link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HM_Q1sG55yU 

(The coverage starts 40 seconds into the recording, and finishes 4.40 later)


He was magnificent. Neither the In-Charge nor I could have uttered more than a couple of words without breaking down completely, but No 1 Son did a fantastic job, which only served to make me cry even more.

Ypres, totally destroyed during the battles of Passchendaele, was identically rebuilt after the War. The Last Post has been sounded every evening since the end of WW1 at the town's Menin Gate - except during Hitler's occupation

The next day, we were taken to the battlefield where they died - and someone who knows a great deal about military tactics and even more about Passchendaele, explained just why the In-Charge's great uncle Ronald was killed.

It was a quiet field, sloping gently upwards to a small knoll of trees, and planted with cabbages.
Such an innocent-looking landscape. You would never guess how many men lie beneath it.
Beautiful boys, just like my son, most of them.
It was the slope that killed Ronald - he'd been given the almost impossible task of leading his men up the hill to take the German position at the top. There was nowhere for them to hide, and the Germans just picked them off.
His father, Harry, died because when Ronald was brought into his headquarters, mortally wounded, Harry insisted on going to find a doctor to try and help his son. Lieutenant-Colonels weren't generally cannon-fodder in the First World War, but on that occasion Harry, a veteran soldier, was in the wrong place at the wrong time; and the saddest part of all is that no doctor could have saved Ronald at that stage, anyway.

We found their names, at last

Melancholy thoughts for a Monday afternoon. Thoughts prompted by the year that's in it, and by the fact that - just two months into2014 - every time you turn on the radio or the television, the Ukraine is teetering on the brink of something potentially explosive, potentially disastrous.

I was in Sligo Town earlier on, and the chap behind the counter of a shop I visited spurned my platitude about the gloriously sunny day.
'I wonder what will happen in the Ukraine?' he said.
We talked about it for a few minutes.
'The guy I work with is Polish,' he commented. 'He says if anything happens in the Ukraine, Poland will probably get involved, and he will have to go home and join the army - all his family are in Poland.'

Who could blame him?
When the politicians and financiers and economists string us up in the tangled webs they weave, what option are we left with but to defend the values, the people, the land - all the things we love most and hold most sacred.
I came away feeling that, collectively, we have all been here before.
And perhaps, collectively, learned very little.

The memorial at Tyne Cot, bearing Kipling's words: 'Their Names Liveth For Evermore'

Remembrance

Don’t you think it’s really sad that everyone doesn’t mark Remembrance Day?

It deserves to be remembered.

Not the wars and all the political nonsense. Just the people whose lives got wasted in the process.

Remembrance Day may be British in origin, but now it’s marked all over the world – it’s a time when people remember people whose lives have been lost in conflict. Those millions who believed in something enough to fight for it, or who loved someone enough to try and protect them, or who in some other way felt it was necessary to put their lives on the line. Remembrance Day isn’t about the issues, or the rights and wrongs, or the bloody politicians and profiteers – it’s just about remembering the ones who died sooner than they should have done.

But you’d go a long way to see anyone wearing a poppy in Ireland.

Like a really long way.

I think that’s woeful.

Everyone thinks primarily of the two World Wars in connection with Remembrance Day. Well, 60,000 Irish died in the two World Wars alone – and there was no conscription, they were volunteers. And they weren’t fighting for Britain, they were fighting against something else. You’d think someone would care enough to wear a poppy for them.

And what kind of travesty was that last week? A popular Irish radio station making much of it being the 11^th hour of the 11^th day of the 11^th month of the 11^th year – without a mention of the deeper significance that that particular moment carries for millions of people.

Get your act together Ireland. If your new President can make it his first official duty – to lay a wreath on Remembrance Day – then I reckon it ought to be possible for the Irish to pin on a poppy – or start their own version of poppy day. Even if it’s just a way of clicking ‘Like’ to say we’ve grown up enough, one day a year, to see beyond the politics to the human stories that are the stuff of life. And loss. 

The Challenges of War.

Before I begin, I would just like to thank everyone who left such generous and kind comments on my entry last week. It was lovely to receive them - and a great encouragement to continue!

This week’s 100 Word Challenge for Grown Ups was to write 100 words with the title, or theme ‘...lest we forget...’

I have to say that, despite Julia’s words to the contrary, I found this much harder than last week’s – but mostly because it was difficult to decide how to use the prompt. It seemed so overwhelmingly associated with Remembrance Day, that I felt I should go off in another direction, but in the end I couldn’t.

There’s a lot of family memory rooted in this one weekend every year, and it is only right that I should honour it.

But first, I want to tell you a story – a true story.

And as we are allowed to include a photograph as part of this week’s challenge, I shall do so, when I get to my entry further on.

My husband’s great grandfather was Harry Moorhouse. He was born in 1869, near Leeds in Yorkshire, and came into the world, as the expression was, hosed and shod. His family owned a woolen mill, but as a young man, making cloth didn’t sing to him as much as the idea of adventure, so instead, at 22, he joined the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, and became a professional soldier. His first active service was in South Africa during the Boer War.

In the early 1890s he married his sweetheart, Susanna Marsdin and they had three children – Ronald Wilkinson, Lydia Marjorie and a second son, Alan. Marjorie, as she was known, was my husband’s grandmother.

When war was declared in 1914, Harry eagerly reported for duty in Wakefield, joining the KOYLI’s 4^th Battalion as a Major. His son Ronald had no intention of being left behind, and, volunteering immediately, received a commission as Second Lieutenant in the same Battalion. Father and son arrived in France together in April 1915.

Just four months later, Harry was wounded. A bullet went through his ankle and he was sent back to England; but by the end of the year had returned to the front, and in January 1916 he received the Distinguished Service Order. He was wounded again during the first days of the Battle of the Somme in July – a bullet this time going through his shoulder, and shrapnel damaging his upper arm. At the time, Harry was standing in for the battalion commander who had himself been been wounded, and he refused to leave his post, but after a further hour and a half he had lost so much blood that he was forced to go to the field hospital. Once again he was sent back to England for medical treatment in Leeds.

Both he and Ronald wrote regular letters home, and we are lucky enough to still have some of these in their tiny, typically early-twentieth century envelopes.  They say very little about what life was like at the front – there was probably no point, as letters were heavily censored – but they are full of love and reassurances.

Ronald meanwhile had been promoted to Temporary Captain, in charge of his own company, a role he obviously fulfilled with great courage and competence, as in April 1917 he led a raid on enemy trenches, commanding 91 men and 4 other officers. Under cover of darkness, their faces blackened, and with a protective barrage of fire exploding all around them, they advanced through mud, wire and craters to the German front line. Unbelievably, they were successful, but their mission was destined to fail, as when they got there it was to find the trenches abandoned, the machine guns removed. However, they immediately came under heavy fire. Calmly and with great leadership, Ronald got all his men away, even though he was wounded himself while helping another injured man back to their own lines. No one was killed and Ronald was sent back to England on a hospital ship, much to his mother’s relief. But the respite didn’t last for long – a month later he returned to the front where he was not only made Captain, but also received the Military Cross for his heroism. He was just 22 years old.

I wish I could tell you that the story of their time in France ended there, but it didn’t. Worse was to come.

I’ll tell you what happened tomorrow.

For now, with Harry and Ronald Moorhouse very much in mind, here is my entry for this week’s 100 word challenge.

The challenge was to write exactly 100 words including the phrase ‘...lest we forget...’

I understand it was supposed to be 100 words, plus the 3 words of the prompt.

If not, then my piece can lose its title.

The photograph is of Lieutenant Colonel Harry Moorehouse, DSO TD, Chevalier de Legion d’Honneur, 4^th Battalion, the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry.

...lest we forget...

...lest we forget the roaring and the thunder,

the shells, the gas, the stench of naked fear,

the broken cries of grown men for their mothers,

the midnight thoughts – ‘Whose madness brought me here?’

...lest we forget the mud, the filth, the anger,

the freezing of the heart as comrades die,

the images of sweethearts, home and young ones

quenched deep in eyes locked, sightless, to the sky.

...lest we forget the fear of sleep  –  of dreaming -

by those returned, unharmed by guns or men;

remember: though the past’s a different country,

today they will be fighting once again.

---

Harry and Ronald's story continues in The Tragedies of War