I saw my first two unknown soldier graves......

It is peculiar to think that 100 years ago, the War to end all Wars, started. Less than 20 years prior, Britain had been engaged in the Crimean War and the Boer War and 20 years later, World War II. It may even have a bearing on Chamberlain's appeasement of Germany and it most definitely shaped Churchill after his tenure in the trenches and his firsthand experience of modern warfare.

There is something about tragedy that can bring a calmness to a place, I saw that at Auschwitz and I saw that at the Menin Gate. At 8pm I saw the Last Post Ceremony and that was quite something. There were several hundred people around me and on the other side of the Gate, I would assume, a similar number and they all appear to be British. The ceremony is about 1/2 an hour long and it is  moving, I saw a few people leave in tears.

 
Afterwards we walked under the Gate and looked at the long list of names, the Commonwealth dead from Ypres. These are the names of the dead that were never recovered, 56,000 inscribed here and another 36,000 further up the road and that wasn't all of them.

I ran in the mornings, a mile from the hotel to the Gate and along the outside of the Ramparts and back in through the Lille Gate entrance, stopping the visit the small rampart cemetery just inside Ypres. I saw my first two unknown soldier graves and looking around the cemetery, every soldier was killed in 1915, all of these men most likely died in the same battle.

On Sunday it was grey and misty in the morning and that is when I found the Edmund Blunden poem etched in stone to one side of the Menin Gate. It amazes me everytime I read the works of any of the Great war poets, they know how to weave pictures and feelings into such deceptively simple poems.

Later that morning I visited the Passchendaele Museum, that was OK, it had some trenches to show what a clean and less waterlogged trench would look like.

It didn't cover the battles of Ypres/Passchendaele in any detail and that was a shame as the bravery, particularly on the part of the Canadians earned them the nickname of "Stormtroopers" from the German troops.

We did drive past "Gas Corner" and the huge stone megalith that has the top carved in the upper torso of a bowed Tommy, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Julien_Memorial, and I was told that the youngest soldier killed was buried a little way down a main road. He signed up at 14 and was killed at 15.

It was odd to see the graves in fields, a random sporadic scattering in one place and then one or two elsewhere and then another in a different field. There were fields of wheat growing with a cleared circle around a single grave. It was explained that this was a possible battle site or just simply the front. Many soldiers were buried where they fell and graves erected over them. The Belgium people have honoured them, not moving the final resting places and simply working around them, keeping the graves clear.

It is difficult to think that such a war only existed as a strip of battle across several Countries and 100's of miles. It didn't encompass the whole of France or Belgium, it was a strip of red blood across a map, a strip of mud, trenches, guns and gas that took a generation and robbed it of youth and light, leaving a World darkened and scared. After 1914, nothing would ever be the same, a war that used modern technology and old world practises.

The Menin Gate at night is beautiful, but it is all about the names, that long list of names of the Commonwealth troops that served and died, their bodies lost. As far away as it seems and 100 years is a long time, it felt so fresh. I saw people picking out their surnames, related or not and the ages, these young men hadn't lived a full life, they'd barely scratched the surface before death took them.

I found it all more startling and real than it should have been. Time hasn't dulled this and I am pleased for that. I was also pleased to see the large numbers of British people there, it is a testament to our collective memories that we don't abandon the young men of yesteryear, they deserve far more than we could ever give them.

The Great War - The Menin Gate, Ypres

"Can you remember?" by Edmund Blunden 
 
Yes, I still remember
The whole thing in a way;
Edge and exactitude
Depend on the day.

Of all that prodigious scene
There seems scanty loss,
Though mists mainly float and screen
Canal, spire and fosse;

Though commonly I fail to name
That once obvious Hill,
And where we went and whence we came
To be killed, or kill.

Those mists are spiritual
And luminous-obscure,
Evolved of countless circumstance
Of which I am sure;

Of which, at the instance
Of sound, smell, change and stir,
New-old shapes for ever
Intensely recur.

And some are sparkling, laughing, singing,
Young, heroic, mild;
And some incurable, twisted,
Shrieking, dumb, defiled.

This poem is to one side of the Menin Gate.

I met "Simone from Rome..."

Just a really quick post as I had a very strange experience yesterday, partly my fault for being English though. I was in London for a concert that my eldest daughter was participating in. Walking down the street to find a Pizza Express and I saw a chap leaning against a lamp post or some such street sign-age. I did a double take as I walked past because I recognised him. I said to my wife, did we just walk past "so and so" but as she's blind to even people that she knows on the street, she had to look back and confirmed my thought.
I went back to check and started with the stupidest line that exists, I said, "Excuse me, do I know you?" Even as I uttered the words I could hear the most obvious response in my head, if someone asked me that question..."How the hell would I know that?" But he was more polite than that and said something along the lines of "I don't know" so I asked him his name and he said "Simone from Rome". Being English and even despite the obvious little white lie, the reason I had gone down this line of questioning is because we don't like to impose or to embarrass people. I am old school, we are reserved and don't really like to harass celebrities.
He then asked my name so I told him and we shook hands and I told him it had been nice to meet him and left.
On getting in the pizzeria, my daughter and her friend were there and they both had a look down the street and both confirmed that I had the DNA of Johnny Depp on my hand.

So I met "Simone from Rome" on the streets of London and didn't ask for an autograph, didn't get a "selfie" and didn't embarrass the poor chap, I hope, and to Johnny Depp, thank you for "Edward Scissorhands", "Benny and Joon", 'Sleepy Hollow", "Sweeney Todd" and "The Lone Ranger" all great films that I have enjoyed immensely and for Captain Jack Sparrow, a great character that I am pretty sure that is an anagram for Simone from Rome but English was never my strong point...

As an addendum, someone else did get a selfie of themselves with Johnny Depp in London yesterday, bugger.

This made me laugh.

http://thedailyedge.thejournal.ie/pornhub-germany-brazil-1562743-Jul2014/

Genius!

My canvas...

My canvas is carved in morning light with the smell of freshly cut grass, a sea of green and blue with a deceptive breeze that disguises the coming heat.
The sounds of birds whispering on the wind, the warning of me, the flit and flutter of delicate wings as they chase and live for the thrill of flight, the purity of simply being.

My canvas is made up of motes of light that glimmer and glisten across the water, each individual sparkle placed there for me to witness. The gliding ducks that create indiscernible ripples across the breezy surface, nature with its character and humour, yet hardy and flourishing.

 

My canvas is made up of music that lightens my soul, that reminds me of the beauty around me and starts my day with a heart stopping moment that marries the sights and smells with the sounds that make me happy, a moment that I captured today and I am sharing with you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vwb4kpOKw9I