The thunder rolled close
overhead, echoing around the cavernous, sheltering vault of the Menin Gate.
Only nature can provide poignancy like this, breaking the minute silence with a
noise like the guns of war. Every night since 1928, at 8pm sharp, the Last Post
is played. It is the local people’s tribute to 300,000 Commonwealth soldiers
killed within a radius of just few kilometres of the Belgian town of Ieper
between 1914 and 1918. Only the Second World War has interrupted the ceremony.
Ever since I was a boy,
whenever I hear those lonely tones played, intense shivers have poured from the
crown of my head, down my neck, shoulders and back. As we stood listening to
the buglers blow, cutting through the silence that engulfed the crowd, I stared
straight ahead and felt that creeping tingle again.
The gate itself is a huge
brick and limestone arch covered in the names of 54,896 men who died defending
the town. Their names are carved in rank and alphabetic order, grouped into the
regiments in which they served. Stretching from the high eves down to eye level
on panel after panel, their names are cut into these stone plaques because they
have no graves. They have no graves because their bodies were mutilated beyond
recognition, torn and scattered by explosion. Unidentifiable, or lost completely, sucked into the Flanders
mud that was churned into a hungry swamp by a rainstorm of high explosive.
There are as many horrific reasons they are not buried with dignity, as there
are names. I have a relative who
is on the Menin Gate. Do you?
Or is yours cut into the
stone at Ploegsteert, a smaller, but still
heartbreaking edifice a few miles to the south of Ieper? I have a relative
remembered there too. Maybe your dead man’s name is a few miles to the north,
carved into the walls that cradle the edge of Tyne Cot, the largest
Commonwealth cemetery in the world.
Or maybe your relative is
one of the marked ones; one of those with their name on a headstone standing
over their bones. I went to one of those gravesides as well, where another
brother of my blood lies since his life was snuffed out when he was half the
age I am now. Davey’s grave bears the inscription, “He died so we might live”.
A simple line of scripture: a platitude by modern perspective, but popular at
the time. I am no christian, but these lines cut deep into me. Because, if it
wasn’t for Davey’s death at a Casualty Clearing Station called Canada Farm, and
that of his brother Eddy, two and a half years earlier and a few miles away in Ploegsteert Wood, then I might well not be alive.
My Grandfather was a fit
young man who worked the mines of South Wales. By the time he was called to
serve he had already lost these two brothers: Davey, only weeks before. His
father too had joined up, despite his middle age, serving until he was
discharged due to injury. Yet, despite all this, when he was called up, my
grandfather, Sam, walked the miles to his medical and back. Not wanting to
fight, but willing. Days later, when his call-up papers were delivered, there
was a clerical error. They read, “Not fit for military service due to a wooden
leg”. He took the papers to the local police station to rectify the error, but
the sergeant took one look at them and said, “Forget it Sam. Go home. Your
family has given enough.”
So, if first Edwin and then
David had not died, my grandfather Samuel would have had to go to the front. He
might well then have been another name carved in stone and I would not have
stood looking up at his brothers’ names, fighting back the tears.
At eight pm, as those bugled
notes rang out under the Menin Gate, I thought of my relatives as I stared
straight ahead, my gaze fixed on the wall of names. My resolute stare slowly
softened to focus on just one of these names of men I didn’t know, the one
exactly in my line of sight. His name? Williams, H.
David
T. Williams, Royal
Engineers. Died 25/10/1917 age 23
Edwin
Williams, Royal
Welch Fusiliers. Died
14/01/1915 age 18
William
Worthing, King’s
Shropshire Light Infantry. Died 25/09/1915
age 23
