Remembering

On Remembrance Sunday I drove down to Wiltshire, to meet up with my elderly dad in the village where he, and his fathers family before him, were born and lived.

My grandfather Walter was the youngest of eleven, and three of his brothers were killed in the first world war. Along with their names on the war memorial in the little church on the hill are the names of the other young men from the village who also died , including another trio of brothers, and two further pairs, bringing the total to twenty three.

Losing one child in the most horrible and savage of circumstances must have been unbearable, to lose two or three is beyond comprehension. I cannot begin to imagine how it must have been for the families, living with the constant dread of a telegram arriving with bad news, or perhaps even worse, no news at all because there must have been many who just disappeared in the mud.

To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of the war, the village had gathered together and organised a tree planting ceremony in the water meadows leading down to the river Kennet, the same meadows that my brother and I used to play in as children, the same meadows that no doubt these young men walked in and rode through, perhaps fishing for brown trout by the weir, or hunting for birds nests in the woods. And through the trees you could glimpse the big house, the house that my great uncles called home.

We wandered through the field and gathered in bright sunlight, my father sitting on a folding chair in the front, frail and stooped, immaculately dressed with a starched handkerchief in his top pocket and matching tie. In his hands he held a family photograph of his three uncles, flanked on either side by their eight siblings, sitting on a summers evening in the rose filled garden. I imagine this was taken just before they went off to France.

There were at least 200 people there, locals, families, people my father remembered, people who remembered him, some had brought photocopies of gravestones from France, others carried medals, all were there to remember.

We stood in front of the twenty three saplings in silence

A jolly man with rosy cheeks stood up and read out the names, as my father sat upright clutching his photograph, tears streaming down his cheeks. He struggled to get to his feet as the local music teacher played the Last Post on his trumpet. I put on my sunglasses and thought of Lucas and tried to imagine him going off to war

Afterwards we all walked back to the village hall for tea and cake. There were noticeboards with photographs and historical references, my father showed people his photographs and I met someone who remembered my grandfather giving her and her brother liquorice ” in a twist of brown paper” from his pocket before church. Some children from the same village school that my father went to, stood up and sang, reading out poems they had written.The trestle table , groaning with cakes and scones collapsed with a loud crash as people scurried around rescuing squashed sponges and flapjacks. My father is so deaf that he didn’t notice.

And then it was time to leave. As I stood in the car park blinking back the tears a rainbow came out. And as the rooks made their way home to roost on the larch lawn , and the setting sun shone golden on the roof of the house that smells of cooking apples and woodsmoke, I got in the car and headed back to London.