Somme Bodies. Somebodies Son
Somme Bodies Somebody's Son
In 2007 I travelled with my mother and sister to The Somme in northern France initially seeking the grave of a relative killed in WW1.
Alex Halkett had been a footballer and captain of Aberdeen FC and volunteered to fight, no doubt drafted into one of the many well intentioned but ill fated 'pals regiments'.
He was killed aged 35. Older than many whose corpses once scattered the fields of Northern France and who now lie in graveyards, arranged with Capability Brown style symmetry, that are sprinkled across the countryside.
We found the grave outside Sailly Au Bois a sleepy town between Arras and Amiens and where a field hospital had been. He died on 22nd February 1917. A gunner, he was injured one day and died the next. Who knows what went through his mind in the time it took to die but like each of the gravestones in every one of the cemeteries, beneath, lies somebody's son.
On the first day we arrived at Vimy Ridge, a giant white limestone structure split in two and surrounded by sheep. The white of the sheep echoing the central white structure. A sentinel standing sentient and serene, benevolently overseeing a once bloodied landscape. It is set at the high point like a white singularity and in a strange irony the sheep maintain a patrol acting as unwitting sappers for a land where unexploded shells to this day are still lurking.
“I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep; I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion.” - Alexander the Great
Vimy Ridge is Canadian soil gifted by the French and tended by Canadian citizens. A distant hum of traffic drowned out by birds and the breeze. The sculpture is immense and powerful both in scale and the minimalist use of figures, heads hung in shame and despair, hands clenched. Beneath, lists and lists of names of the dead now fight for space, for recognition.
Ghosts of soldiers in an overcrowded parade whispering, "That's me".
(In the distance two giant pyramid slag heaps mark the site of the battle of Loos, one of the most feocious and ill fated battles. It is said that the Germans were so appalled they stopped firing as waves of men kept coming at them only to be sliced down. 60,000 British men and 30,000 Germans were killed or wounded.) In Dundee no-one was unaffected by the collosal losses. It is said in every street in the city a man had fallen.
On departure from the Vimy memorial we spotted a graveyard, the first we had seen. This was Givenchy. We stopped and I wandered aimlessly looking at the rows of graves. Two sometimes three even four names on a single head stone conveyed the horror of indistinguishable body parts. That and the absence of dog tags meant identifying bodies torn apart by flying metal was often not possible.
More often, the simple phrase,
“A soldier of the Great War, Known unto God”was all that appeared.
Soldiers from the London Scottish Regiment made me think of my rugby playing days at Old Deer Park in Richmond. A pals regiment but under a sporting banner.
In the background my sister called out.
“Where did you live in Edinburgh? Your first flat.”
“Strathearn Road”, I replied.
“What number?”
“Why?”
“What number?”
“Seventy.”
“You’d better look at this.”
At the entrance to each graveyard is a book listing all of the soldiers buried there. The first page she turned to and the first name she looked at was that of William A Allan of 70 Strathearn Road Edinburgh. 20,000 British men died on the first day alone of fighting in The Somme and in the opening of a book she found a soldier who lived at the same address I had.
I always said I would go back and in 2023 I did.
It is a deeply moving part of the world, unimagineable in its horror to most, including me, but it takes either a strong disposition or callous nature not to shed a tear at the sacrifice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Halkett www.cwgc.org/find-a-cemetery/cemetery/28600/SAILLY-AU-BOIS%20MILITARY%20CEMETERY