“Do not stand
By my grave, and weep.
I am not there,
I do not sleep—”
We've just passed Remembrance Day in the UK. The opportunity to remember the service and sacrifice of all those who have defended our freedoms and protected our way of life. This week's meander is, therefore, somewhat sombre, and as with my piece 'Pertaining to Cows', it may provoke various reactions.
In the days leading up to the day itself, you will see many people in the UK wearing some form of poppy to symbolise that remembrance. Wearing a poppy is a personal choice. I choose so to do. A small symbol that says I remember.
And, of course, in buying a poppy, you are doing more than just remembering the dead from conflicts many decades ago. You are giving to charity - The Royal British Legion that supplies financial, social and emotional support to members and veterans of the British Armed Forces, their families and dependants. The RBL support some 36,000 Disablement Pension cases for war veterans, making around 300,000 welfare and friendship visits yearly. In the past, I've been a volunteer poppy seller and the generosity of people to that cause I found overwhelming.
As part of the RBL's Great War, 'Every Man Remembered' campaign, I wore a poppy in the name of Private Taylor, A Gordon Highlander. In another year, it was for Private Outhwaite, a Machine Gunner. Both men were killed in that Great War from which Remembrance Day emerged. But not all war casualties wore military uniforms, so in wearing a poppy, I also remember people such as Edith Cavell and Noor Inayat Khan. Harry Farr and the other 305 men who were wrongly executed by firing squad during the Great War. Indeed, I wear my poppy in remembrance of all, be they military or civilian, of any sex, religion or belief and all nationalities that have lost their lives to military aggression or terrorism. I wear it in keeping with the phrase 'Lest we forget', as if we do forget, then to paraphrase George Santayana, it condemns us to repeat that which we forget. However, when we look at the conflicts and acts of terror that continue all over the world, it seems many choose to forget and are hell-bent on repeating the horrors. Some reading this will, therefore, think that wearing a poppy means I am simply naive. That may be so, but there are far worse things to be other than naive.
I've shared in other pieces that in my latter working years, I had the honour to take part on several occasions in my then-employer's remembrance activities. I gave one talk on the history of poppy-wearing. Very much seen as a British symbol today, but its first shoots were in the USA. On another occasion, my subject was "My family at War". As the title suggests, it was my family's involvement in the Great War, the Second World War and later in 'peacetime'.
Those regular readers of my meanders will know that my then twenty-year-old grandfather, a coal miner, left the mine in August 1914 to answer the call for volunteers to fight in the Great War. It was not in some patriotic fervour or deep hatred for Germans but simply that army pay was steadier than that for the piece work pay from private mine owners. He also thought the trenches would be no more dangerous than working deep underground. He was correct about the pay but not the trenches.
Still, he managed to get through nearly three years of war before shrapnel from an artillery shell seriously wounded him. The path it tore along his leg, arm and jaw was still obvious some 50 years later. Indeed, his jaw required rebuilding, and he kept the metal brace he had inside his mouth as the jaw bones reset as a sombre souvenir. His injuries meant it was the end of his fighting days, so after recovering from his wounds, he was back down the coal mine for the next forty years.
My grandmother's (although at the time, she and my grandfather were yet to meet) Great War effort was as a 'canary' the nickname given to munition workers as the prolonged exposure to cordite gave their skin a jaundiced look. When the Second World War broke out, my mother, who had just turned sixteen, hoped to join the Women's Royal Army Corp. Alas, her flat feet scuppered that, so she followed my grandmother's example and also began work as a canary. It was a dangerous occupation, and in later years, my mother recounted several stories of accidents leading to injury and, on occasion, death of the women (and it was almost all women) who worked in that occupation. Fortunately for her (and me), she came through her five years of service unscathed.
My father was a firefighter when the Second World War broke out, and once the bombing of cities began, it kept him pretty busy. It's not much known that firefighters moved from other parts of the country to London at the height of the blitz, in my father's case, to a station on the Euston Road near to Euston railway station. It's still an operational station today for the London Fire Brigade. Whenever I pass it, it calls to mind those 'angels with dirty faces' and my father's stories of fighting fires through the war.
Being a firefighter is a dangerous occupation at any time. Still, it doesn't help when someone is also intent on dropping high explosives or incendiaries on you at the same time you are going about your day job. Again, fortunately for me, he too came through his wartime experience unscathed.
Throughout his life, he kept much respect for the Salvation Army. Not through any religious beliefs but because when the bombs were falling, and the firefighters, Air Raid Patrol wardens, and other emergency services were looking to save lives, it was the good old volunteer 'Sally Annes' that were alongside them, sharing the danger, helping survivors, and feeding the emergency services workers.
When the Second World War broke out, my grandfather was in his late forties and became a member of the Home Guard. The TV comedy series 'Dad's Army' now very much defines that organisation in a lot of people's minds. Unlike many who watched it, my grandfather did not like the show. He was proud of his service and felt the TV show ridiculed those willing, whatever their age, to defend the country against invasion. On the other hand, my father felt a grain of truth was running through the programme, given some of the antics he knew the Home Guard indulged in. I've always found Dad's Army funny - but as I much loved my grandfather, I never shared that with him. And we must remember that should Hitler have successfully invaded the UK, it would have been to people like my grandfather and the other veterans and youngsters that the country would have turned.
My brother and sister joined the Army in the 1960s - supposedly in 'peacetime'. Yet that 'peace' still saw my brother serving in places like Aden, Singapore and Northern Ireland.
I live beside a large cemetery that acts as a 'civilian' cemetery but also comes under the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) remit. The CWGC is an intergovernmental organisation between the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India, whose principal function is to mark, record and support the graves and places of commemoration of Commonwealth of Nations military service members who died in the two World Wars. The commission is also responsible for commemorating Commonwealth civilians who died because of enemy action during the Second World War.
The CWGC ensures the commemoration individually and equally, irrespective of military or civil rank, race or creed, of all Commonwealth war dead with their name and some details on a small, simple yet dignified headstone.
Within Blaydon cemetery, the graves of those who died in service are intermingled with the graves of the other deceased. My route to the town centre of Blaydon and its railway station takes me through the cemetery. So, I've come to know those lasting memorials to many serving personnel. They well represent the cross-section of people who lost their lives serving in the two World Wars. It will be no surprise that most graves are from the Great War. Many members of local northeast regiments, such as the Northumberland Fusiliers and the Durham Light Infantry. But there's also Septimus Amos from the Canadian infantry and M G Brinton, a nurse, as well as B Puddifoot from HMS Conquest and T Rochester from what would have then been a fledgeling Royal Air Force. Those in the cemetery from the Second World War again come from the Royal Navy, the Royal Air Force and the Army. But also, Edward Copeland from the Searchlight Regiment and J Douglass from the Signal Service Training Centre.
At the top of this piece are the opening lines of 'Immortality', of whom many claimed authorship. However, the words are, in fact, those of Clare Harner. The version below (the poem altered slightly in later versions) was first published in 'The Gypsy' in December 1934.
Do not stand
By my grave, and weep.
I am not there,
I do not sleep—
I am the thousand winds that blow
I am the diamond glints in snow
I am the sunlight on ripened grain,
I am the gentle, autumn rain.
As you awake with morning’s hush,
I am the swift, up-flinging rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight,
I am the day transcending night.
Do not stand
By my grave, and cry—
I am not there,
I did not die.
It is a beautiful poem echoing a wonderful sentiment, and I have attended many a moving Armistice Commemoration ceremony. As a young man, I stood amongst those who knew what it was like to go 'over the top'. To run and, at times, ordered to walk towards the guns. Who saw friends and comrades killed sometimes when only a few feet from them on the battlefield. Yet their stories were more of the lice and mud and dodgy grub than acts of bravery or sights of horror. I guess, in their case, to remember was still a little too fresh in their minds. And there were men from the Second World War too, who musing over a beer after the ceremony offered the black humour of old soldiers rather than the derring-do of running up shallow beaches with bullets fizzing past, jumping out of burning tanks or the joys of standing up to their waists in the Channel hoping for rescue off the coast near a little place called Dunkirk. These rheumy-eyed men, now stiff of limb decades ago, had, at an age not much older than I was at the time, 'done their bit' and now lived in the hope they would be the last called upon to do the same. You might say they were as naive as I am.
During my career, the Armistice ceremonies I attended took on a more military favour with ramrod lines of serving service personnel, crisp salutes and beautifully plaintive recitals of the 'Last Post'. But the most evocative for me was after my retirement when, for a few years, I was a volunteer reader at a primary school, helping six and seven-year-olds develop their reading skills. Armistice Day fell on one of their schooldays. So, at 10:45, all the children, toastily wrapped up against the cold November chill, assembled on the 'parade ground' (usually known as their playground). Class by class, each child planted a handmade, by them, paper poppy on a grassy bank beside that playground, returning to line up in rows. Rows that were a bit straggly, and yes, there was some shuffling and whispering in the ranks, and yet when the school bell sounded 11 am, every child fell silent and stood stock still for two minutes. A task that takes much concentration for those so young. As I stood in silence with the children, their teachers and proud parents and grandparents, some with handkerchiefs discreetly bundled in hand, I glanced up at the fluttering red paper poppies. I thought of my grandad and his old comrades and imagined the smiles they might wear if looking at this scene.
Lest we forget.
Harry, this is a touching, beautifully written tribute piece. The poem is one of my favorites, too and wonderfully fitting.
Love this , Harry Beautiful writing. I will read it again.