At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month - we will remember them

 

The Cenotaph in Whitehall was first opened as a temporary war memorial on Peace Day, 19 July 1919, when celebrations to mark the end of the First World War were held throughout the UK and Ireland. It was designed, then built using plaster and wood by Edwin Lutyens at the request of the Prime Minister Lloyd George.

The Times referred to Peace Day as "the greatest ritual day in our history"; the object of this state event was to represent society as a harmonious whole, united in remembrance, and to paper over the social tensions of the period. And for the past ten decades the Cenotaph in Whitehall, London has played host to the Remembrance Service, forming such an enduring part of our commemoration of those who lost their lives in past conflicts.

At its unveiling, the base of the monument was spontaneously covered in wreaths to the dead and ‘missing’ from The Great War.

Such was the extent of public enthusiasm for the construction, it was decided that The Cenotaph should become a permanent and lasting memorial. The Cenotaph, made from Portland stone, was unveiled in 1920.

One day in August 1918

The sun rose just over an hour ago… but it made no difference.

The sky is always so dark and angry. Thick black clouds hang above my head, no more than a symbol of death. Images of the fallen etched into every suspended particle of moisture. 

Yesterday added two more of my mates to the ‘crowded house’. The day before, it was two more, and before that…

The painful realisation that my invitation to ‘join the party’ is ‘in the post’, simply reinforces the inevitable conclusion that each and every day is likely to be my last.

Behind me I can hear the briefly reassuring drone of a Vickers FB.5 heading out across our lines. But I know what’s coming next. Fokker fighter planes are already whizzing through the sky. They are circling high up above the slow-moving clouds… and at a speed so far beyond the God given pace of my ’dear friend’s faces’.

The heavens opened and the tears of thousands fell on me. Bolts of lightning hit the devastated earth, a comforting distraction from what is soon to follow.

Everywhere I look, my eyes fall upon an ocean of despair. I try so hard to find just one tiny image of beauty. But no matter where I look, and I do look, I can find nothing to cling on to. 

The shelling has started. Earth and sand hit my face. ‘Take that’, the sender cries out loud. He is laughing at me. The smoke wraps up the impending death in a shroud of pain. It stings my eyes … tiny needles stabbing at my drawn pallid face. 

The rain continues to fall and with it the souls of the fallen combine in a tsunami of water and mud, filling my trench with the decomposing body of life. 

A Shot from Wales – written and first published, August 2018