Lest We Forget

I don't know quite what it is that fascinates me so, but a very high proportion of my favourite books/tv shows/films are set during wartime. Perhaps I'm a glutton for tragedy, perhaps it's the sheer emotional power of the drama or perhaps I'm just drawn to the heroism and sacrifice so often on display. If I watch Warriors (a criminally underrated BBC drama) or Band of Brothers or the final episode of Blackadder Goes Forth I'll usually be found sobbing. Bravery humbles me and so I cry.

Last year I went to Bruges and whilst there, visited a lot of First World War related sites. I was utterly drained afterwards as it made me unbelievably emotional and I basically wept my way round the cemetery but it's one of the best things I've ever done. I don't think a lot of people understood quite why I wanted to go in the first place. I know it's not the most usual holiday destination but it was something that I needed to do.

Tyne Cot cemetery

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission do an outstanding job. This cemetery is one of many and they're all immaculate.

Some of the gravestones have heartbreakingly sad inscriptions but it's the unknown ones that really got to me, especially the rows and rows of Australian and New Zealand graves. There were just so many of them, men who had died halfway around the world and all that could be said was something as simple as "An Australian solider of the Great War."

Trenches and shell holes at Sanctuary Wood, just outside Ypres. This was a baking hot June day and there was still mud everywhere. I can't imagine the horrors of it during winter.

I was reading Letters From A Lost Generation at the time which I really can't recommend highly enough. It's heartbreaking but wonderful; letters between Vera Brittain and her brother, fiancee and two friends, all four of whom died in the war. It drives home the utter futility of it all but their optimism and eloquence through such horror is awe inspiring.


I know I've talked mostly about the First World War in this post but that's just because of having visited the battlefields and cemeteries last year. It's equally important to remember all the other conflicts and the sacrifices made by people. So tomorrow I'll be taking part in the two minutes silence and I'll be thinking of the big brother of one of my best friends. The army was his life but it's also a large part of the reason why he ended his life. To do the things he did in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq took immense courage and that should never be forgotten.


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

from For The Fallen by Laurence Binyon

And just to leave you with a final piece of poetry, because it's a bit lesser known than work by Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon and I think it deserves to be better known:

In Memoriam
by Lieutenant Ewart Alan Mackintosh (killed in action 21st November 1917 aged 24)

So you were David’s father,
And he was your only son,
And the new-cut peats are rotting
And the work is left undone,
Because of an old man weeping,
Just an old man in pain,
For David, his son David,
That will not come again.

Oh, the letters he wrote you,
And I can see them still,
Not a word of the fighting,
But just the sheep on the hill
And how you should get the crops in
Ere the year get stormier,
And the Bosches have got his body,
And I was his officer.

You were only David’s father,
But I had fifty sons
When we went up in the evening
Under the arch of the guns,
And we came back at twilight -
O God! I heard them call
To me for help and pity
That could not help at all.

Oh, never will I forget you,
My men that trusted me,
More my sons than your fathers’,
For they could only see
The little helpless babies
And the young men in their pride.
They could not see you dying,
And hold you while you died.

Happy and young and gallant,
They saw their first-born go,
But not the strong limbs broken
And the beautiful men brought low,
The piteous writhing bodies,
They screamed “Don’t leave me, sir”,
For they were only your fathers
But I was your officer.