We Will Remember Them

This weekend marks the hundred anniversary of the end of the First World War. Better people than me have written about the horror and pointlessness of that and every other war so I'm not going to try and be overly profound but simply share my own experiences and how they helped me to understand what it must have been like to be fighting in that terrible war.

When I was thirteen I went on a trip to the First World War battlefields and cemeteries in France and Belgium. It was an experience I think that made me reassess the world and perhaps the time when the fairy tale innocence of childhood vanished forever. At thirteen, I was only a few years younger than many people who actually fought in the war. Indeed, the youngest person to have fought and died in the war was only twelve.

Here are five things I saw on that trip.

This is the Lochnagar Crater, left by a mine during the Battle of the Somme. It's huge, some thirty metres (98 feet) deep and a hundred metres (330 feet) wide. At the time it was the loudest man-made sound ever and could potentially have been heard as far away as London. 

For me, this crater represents the horror of technology in warfare. It's incredible to think that humans have gone to such lengths to create such unnecessarily powerful weapons to kill each other with. The poor soldiers were facing this sort of bombardment as well as snipers if they ever stuck their head above the trenches and machine gun fire when they went into No-Man's Land. 

Any military grave is sad but there's something even more heartbreaking about those that don't even have a name on. Presumably whoever found the body could identify that this was an airman due to the uniform or the fact they were in a plane but the body was so badly damaged it could not be identified. Vast numbers of those who fought and died in the First World War have no known grave. The Thiepval Memorial to the Missing has 72,337 names on it but covers just the Battle of the Somme. 

This stone is not the more familiar white of First World War graves. After months of fighting Private Albert Ingham was told at short notice he would once more have to go to the front line. He chose to desert but was caught and so the army had him shot by a firing squad. That sentence really sickens me. It's likely that Albert witnessed some truly terrible things and felt he had no choice but to escape. The army didn't try and support him through this, they killed him. Millions of others must have felt similarly but didn't take the risk or simply didn't have the opportunity. 

It also marks the British attitude to soldiers after the war. These heroes returned home broken, both mentally and physically yet no support was given to them. As a famous phrase goes, they were promised homes fit for heroes but got heroes fit for homes.

This grave looks different to the more familiar ones too but this one is different because it's the grave of a German soldier. Whilst the allies have countless cemeteries across Europe there are few German ones despite nearly two million German soldiers dying. What I find odd is how the people on either side of No Man's Land were very similar, just doing their bit for their country. This was proved in 1914 when for a few hours soldiers on both sides met to play football against each other. 

Every European family (and many beyond) have their own war story, even if they don't know it. This is 13-year old me standing behind the grave of Sam Insall, my Great Great Uncle. He was called up to war in August 1914.

This is an extract from a letter to his parents:

“We are getting some nice weather out here now, and about time, for it has been nothing but rain up till recently, and we have had to go up to the trenches waist deep at times. I cannot tell you where we are, but there has been some scrapping. You should just hear the artillery when they start chucking old iron at one another”.

This is the only bit of writing I have of Sam's and although the tone is quite cheery it is clear how miserable and scary life must have been. Standing in a trench waist-deep in muddy water with artillery crashing around your head and the potential for death always at the forefront for your mind. Truly horrific.

On 6th April 1915, at Festubert in France, Sam was shot through the heart. He was nineteen. The thought of that is so horrible. He was just beginning to find his feet in the world with so much life and potential ahead of him. Sam lost all of that, for a war he probably didn't even understand why he was fighting. 

It is this that we should be remembering. All the men like Sam whose lives were destroyed, millions across Europe and indeed the world. The thought of such a thing happening is incomprehensible but it really did happen. I think the First World War is the greatest tragedy that humankind has ever suffered as a species and it was made entirely by us. We have to remember our lowest moment so that we can prevent anything even a fraction as terrible from happening again, and to remember all those young men who lost their lives for nothing.

I shall end with the Ode to Remembrance, words which sum it all up like I never would be able to: 

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.