As I’m writing this on Remembrance Sunday, I think any title would sound like a cliché, hence my adapted version. Besides, such days are a paradox; meaning something different for everyone and yet provoking the same thoughts in so many.
I remember spending a long weekend in Ypres with a mate of mine, a Kiwi, in October 2017. By sheer coincidence, the day we arrived marked the 100th anniversary of the date New Zealand lost the most men in a single day’s battle at Passchendaele. It was so moving to visit Tyne Cot Cemetery; see the lines of graves reaching towards a symbolic horizon. The numbers were overwhelming. The mass of names on the memorial wall; soldiers whose bodies had never been found. Lives lost — for what? Of course, those young men were fighting for freedom, but as we look at history, we see that same cause repeating itself, reflecting the reality – they are victims of the greed and hubris of the powerful. It seems humanity never learns — and as Churchill said, if we don’t learn from history, we’re doomed to repeat it. Wilfred Owen, in his moving poem Anthem For Doomed Youth wrote of ‘these who die as cattle’. He was killed in the last week of World War One, and his mother received the telegram informing of his death on the day the Armistice was declared. Imagine that pain — well, it’s unimaginable.
That last comment brings home another fact; there are torments that go beyond the battlefields, for the bereaved and for those afflicted by invisible wounds, such as PTSD. Thanks to the work of the Royal British Legion and other charities, we have a much greater awareness of these issues. I looked at other consequences of such matters as an underlying theme in my novel The Armistice Killer. You know me — it took a very dark twist! Nevertheless, I hope the points I made were relevant.
At the risk of being accused of laziness, I’m going to conclude this blog with a poem I wrote when I was in my mid-20s and posted in a previous blog. Also, it was published in an anthology years ago. I just think it’s appropriate today and actually, I’m rather proud of the poem, as it said everything I wanted it to say (which is not always the case with writing!) about the loss of life in war, the loss of youth, and the beauty of this time of year. I hope it provokes some thought.
FALL
Through Autumn’s incorporeal, misty flesh
The lattices and bones of Winter showed
As leaves, killed by a sudden, heavy frost,
Fell straight. They gathered, guttered, in the road.
No breeze or drift romanticised their fall
To flutterings for hearts already lost.
There was a world that filled this window-frame,
Its images the picture-book of youth.
It seems the fog descends more harshly now.
These still-white leaves are cold November’s truth.
If on this canvas we could sketch our dreams,
Would there be pastel sunlight once again,
And would it still fall chequered through the trees,
Throwing light and shade on innocent and green?