Through drizzle to Ypres
This is just a note after my recent holiday in Holland - that is at least where we slept, for we spent an awful lot of time in Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg. Can't say there's many places you can comfortably do 4 countries in a day!Anyway, being in the neighbourhood, I persuaded the family to go to Ieper or Ypres, a quick 165 mile trip from Maastricht, but we were going to the ferry that day and with a promise of visiting IKEA on the last leg, there was no argument!
I had a mission, for my great-uncle, Stanley Evans, died at Paschendaele. I had located his name on the Tyne Cot memorial nearby. I wanted to pay my respects for the man, yet it was more than just that. My Great uncle Bobby crossed the pond in 1911 and settled in Georgia. One of his sons did the genealogy bit about 15 years back and reunited with us.
Though my Dad's age, I did a lot of travelling with him and his wife on various trips, we drove from Colorado to Florida and discovered the Pyrenees and Cornwall on other occasions. We had a great time and many many tales. He was desperate to learn more of the family in the old country and we told him what crumbs we knew. All the while we promised to meet in Belgium and pay our respects to our uncle Stanley for some ways he was an important link to the two of us. My american cousin was William Stanley Evans.
I say was, as Billy Stan left us a few years back, aged 79. A good innings and a few tales to tell. Now, I had found the time and the situation. No excuses. This one was for me and American Stan.
The journey was long. The weather had taken us from blue skies in Maastricht, to cloud in the Ardennes and then a grey film of mist enveloped all around as we entered Flanders. The calm motoring of the East had given way to the manic attitude of the West, buzzing around the carriageway like midges. Quite fitting in Remembrance Day week, the fields showed signs of their legendary muddiness. The constitution of treacle, some said.
We found Tyne Cot quite easily, in a village outskirts near the tiny Paschendaele. It was tucked away in a sleepy suburb and surrounded by fields. It was a strange moment getting out of the car to the smells of dairy farming; perhaps that was how it felt in 1915. The time the soldiers came to dig in to protect this green pocket of Belgium, years before the pock marked charred lifeless morass that decorated so many photographs in books. I read that the Allies built 150 dugouts in the area, all now lost. Tunnels about 40 metres below the ground, used as shelters, bases, hospitals. I also read that 200 tons of ammunition are still recovered each year. Still! The thought strikes you that every step you take you are touching the pain and suffering of 90 years ago.
It's a long walk around to the cemetery front and it takes you past the lines of white stone tablets, simple testaments of the fallen. 12,000 reminders of the price of conflict. All set out neatly in rows of tablets, unbroken. There are remnants of the battle still there amongst the silent headstones and trees. German concrete bunkers are surrounded by the dead. Even today, they look like death traps for those faced with overrunning them. Close examination of the main cross at the cemetary centre shows it too is formed from a bunker. It looks impregnable, but then no-one told the Aussies that in 1917. The diggers overcame the odds, though the memorial does not show how many lives bought that small slab of rock. I shudder to think.
My goal is past the graves, for the back of the cemetary is walled. White marble panels cover the centre of each part of this wall and among the 35,000 names on them is my uncle. I start at the beginning, the drizzle that falls on me is brushed away without a thought. My wife is the more practical and finds that books are provided listing the dead. My quest becomes limited to three panels. 62 to 65. Picking up speed, I make a mental nod to those others I pass. The names are by regiment. Split by rank. Some Regiments have suffered more than others. The Warwicks have 4 panels for themselves, names upon names. I move to the centre, where alcoves provide access to two small rings attached to the wall. He is there among them. Panel 63. Lance Corporal. The name a simple shadow on the pale stone. Evans S.
It's strange how disorganised I am these days, post- house moving disorder, I expect. The week before, I bought a poppy from an old gentleman in ASDA in Milton Keynes. He nodded and smiled, whilst I toyed with the idea of asking if one of his medals was the Burma Star. I didn't want to look ignorant, so the poppy went in my pocket and I forgot about it. Somehow it got moved with all the other detritus in my pockets and ended up in what I was wearing. I quickly fished it out, it was in surprisingly good condition. I placed it in the gravel below the wall. It looked as small among the other tributes, as one simple name looked among 46,000. It made no difference, it's message spoke volumes for me. You are not forgotten.
I didn't know what to expect with this action. I hardly expected to see a group of ethereal Tommies in khaki and puttees, nodding with approval whilst puffing away on their pipes. There was a feeling of peace, a place to allow me contemplation of what it all meant.
I obviously never knew the man and those who did are all gone now. There are no stories, Stanley was the favourite of his sisters, he was the one they most liked and the one they most missed. That's all I know. A few yellowing photos in uniform, a name on a memorial. A dead man's penny I found as a child in my Nain's house. That's all I had that spoke of the man who fell in the Flanders mud in 1917. I don't know how he laughed, did he have a girlfriend, what was his work, what did he like? All gone and I was too young to know or care when I could ask those who knew the answers.
Those on the wall are the men never found. True, some could be those 'known unto God' marked on a few of the graves. More likely the bodies were not recovered, who were blown apart or lost in the mud. Some even buried, only to be lost by later battles over the same ground. They represent a small percentage of the millions lost to Europe and their allies. So why do I mourn them? Why do I seek out those that I never met? Morbid curiosity? No.
In my family, I think I must have been the only one able who has shown an interest to pay their respects. I may be the first and perhaps it is only fitting having read a lot of the events that I should be the one to do it. The Great War changed society like no other before or since. It solved some issues, it created more that we live with to this day. It left a feeling of anger and resentment which I think tarnishes this country's psyche even now. Yet even so, the result was a country free and prosperous and one still worth living in. It is only fitting we should try and acknowledge the suffering of our forebears in gratitude for what we have today. Warts n'all.
posted by Geraint @ 6:12 am
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