Read The Missing of the Somme Online
Authors: Geoff Dyer
The Missing of the Somme (18 page)
I cross the grass and walk up the shadow-mounted steps of the Memorial itself. A few wreaths have been left by the Great War Stone, their red petals glowing brightly against the pale stone. From
here I can see that the monument is built on sixteen huge legs which come together in interlocking arches;
also that it is made of brick. Concrete can be poured in a mass but
bricks have to be placed individually just as, on each of the four sides of the sixteen legs, the names of the missing had to be carved on bands of white stone facing. (The design of the sixteen
legs presumably originated in the need to create enough surface area to accommodate all the names in such a way – no more than five or six feet above head height – that they are easily
readable.) Most names are here, arranged by regiments. Game W 27446, Game W 27448. There are several Dyers. High up, two plaques – French on one side, English on the other – explain
that the names are recorded here of 73,077 men who lost their lives in the Battle of the Somme and to whom the fortunes of war denied the honour of proper burial.
I remember John Berger in a lecture suggesting that ours has been the century of departure, of migration, of exodus – of disappearance. ‘The century of people helplessly seeing
others, who were close to them, disappear over the horizon.’ If this is so, then the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing casts a shadow into the future, a shadow which extends beyond the dead of
the Holocaust, to the Gulag, to the ‘disappeared’ of South America and of Tiananmen.
There had been military disasters before the Battle of the Somme, but these – the Charge of the Light Brigade, for example – served only as indictments of individual strategy, not of
the larger purpose of which they were a part. For the first time in history the Great War resulted in a sense of the utter waste and futility of war. If the twentieth century has drifted slowly
towards an acute sense of waste as a moral and political issue, then the origins of the ecology of compassion (represented by the peace movement, most
obviously) are to be
found in the once-devastated landscape of the Somme.
That is why so much of the meaning of our century is concentrated here. Thiepval is not simply a site of commemoration but of prophecy, of birth as well as of death: a memorial to the future, to
what the century had in store for those who were left, whom age would weary.
At the far side of the memorial there is a small cemetery. On the Cross of Sacrifice at the edge of the cemetery I read:
THAT THE WORLD MAY REMEMBER THE COMMON SACRIFICE
OF TWO AND A HALF MILLION DEAD HERE
HAVE BEEN LAID SIDE BY SIDE SOLDIERS OF FRANCE
AND OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE IN ETERNAL COMRADESHIP
.
The cemetery is divided in two halves: French crosses on one side, English headstones on the other. A place where time and silence have stood their ground. In the distance, wheat fields and low
hedges, trees. I walk along rows of crosses on each of which is written the single word: inconnu. Row after row. On the English side there are the pale headstones:
A SOLDIER
OF THE GREAT WAR
KNOWN UNTO GOD
In front of each grave there are flowers: flame-bursts of yellow, pink, red, orange. Apart from roses I recognize none of the flowers; the rest remain unknown, unnamed.
The only sound is of humming bees, of light passing through trees, striking the grass. Gradually I become aware that the air is alive with butterflies. The flowers are thick
with the white blur of wings, the rust and black camouflage of Red Admirals, silent as ghosts. I remember the names of only a few butterflies but I know that the Greek word
psyche
means
both ‘soul’ and ‘butterfly’. And as I sit and watch, I know also that what I am seeing are the souls of the nameless dead who lie here, fluttering through the perfect
air.
It is early evening by the time I make my way to Beaumont-Hamel. I walk along a footpath to a small cemetery on the top of a low hill. From the cemetery gate I can see the
crosses of four other small cemeteries.
The headstones are arranged in three lines, facing east. It is a perfect spot, without even the drone of cars to disturb it. The light is softening, stretching out over the fields. Soft and
sharp, gentle and bright. I take out the register of graves. Cemetery Redan Ridge Number One: 154 soldiers lie here, 73 unidentified. As I look through the book, the sun makes the pages glow the
same colour as the Great War Stone.
Few people come here: the first entry in the visitors’ book was made in 1986, the last ten days ago. On 18 August 1988 a girl from the Netherlands had written: ‘It is because of the
lonelyness.’
Light, field, the crosses of the other cemeteries. The faint breeze makes the pages stir beneath my fingers. It is the opposite of lonely, this cemetery: friends are buried here together –
so what truth do these strange words express? The harder I try to decipher them, the more puzzling they become until,
recognizing how ingrained is my mistake, trying to break a
code that is not even there, I let them stand for themselves, their mystery and power undisturbed, these words that explain everything and nothing.
Scarves of purple cloud are beginning to stretch out over the horizon, light welling up behind them. The sun is going down on one of the most beautiful places on earth.
I have never felt so peaceful. I would be happy never to leave.
So strong are these feelings that I wonder if there is not some compensatory quality in nature, some equilibrium – of which the poppy is a manifestation and symbol – which means that
where terrible violence has taken place the earth will sometimes generate an equal and opposite sense of peace. In this place where men were slaughtered they came also to love each other, to
realize Camus’s great truth: that ‘there are more things to admire in men than to despise’.
Standing here, I know that some part of me will always be calmed by the memory of this place, by the vast capacity for forgiveness revealed by these cemeteries, by this landscape.
At this moment I am the only person on earth experiencing these sensations, in this place. At the same time, overwhelming and compounding this feeling, is the certainty that my presence here
changes nothing; everything would be exactly the same without me.
Perhaps that is what is meant by ‘lonelyness’ – knowing that even at your moments of most exalted emotion, you do not matter (perhaps this is precisely the moment of most
exalted emotion) because these things will always be here: the dark trees full of summer leaf, the fading light that has
not changed in seventy-five years, the peace that lies
perpetually in wait.
The sky is streaked crimson by the time I leave the cemetery of Redan Ridge Number One. I make my way back towards the road through dark fields. Tomorrow, a year from now, it
will be exactly the same: birds lunging and darting towards the horizon; three crosses silhouetted against the blood-red sky; a man walking along the curving road; lights coming on in distant
farmhouses – and each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
NOTES
Place of publication is London unless otherwise indicated. Full sources are given in the Notes only when the source is not obvious from the text or the Bibliography. Multi-part
quotes may extend across more than one page, but the Notes reference is for the first part only.
p.
3
‘On every mantelpiece . . .’: Yvan Goll, ‘Requiem for the Dead of Europe’, in Jon Silkin (ed.),
The Penguin Book of First
World War Poetry
, p. 244.
p.
3
‘Memory has a . . .’: John Updike,
Memories of the Ford Administration
(Hamish Hamilton, 1993) p. 9.
p.
4
‘in his ghastly . . .’: Wilfred Owen, ‘Disabled’,
Collected Poems
, p. 67.
p.
7
‘the turning-point in . . .’:
Men without Art
, extract reprinted in Julian Symons (ed.),
The Essential Wyndham Lewis
, p.
211.
p.
8
For an extended discussion of pre-1914 as a period of latent war see Daniel Pick,
War Machine
(1993), pp. 192–5.
p.
8
‘breaking down even . . .’: A. J. P. Taylor,
Europe: Grandeur and Decline
(Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1991), p.
185.
p.
8
‘maintain towards his . . .’: ‘The Idea of History’, in Fritz Stern (ed.),
The Varieties of History
, 2nd edn
(Macmillan, 1970), p. 292.
p.
11
‘prepared his exit . . .’ and ‘We are setting . . .’:
Scott and Amundsen: The Race to the South Pole
, revised edn
(Pan, 1983), p. 508.
p.
11
‘has shown that . . .’: ibid., p. 523.
p.
11
‘We are showing . . .’: ibid., p. 508.
p.
11
‘Of their suffering . . .’: Thomas Williamson, quoted by Huntford, ibid., pp. 520–21.
p.
12
‘if Scott fails . . .’: ibid., p. 394.
p.
12
‘the grotesque futility . . .’: ibid., p. 527.
p.
12
‘heroism for heroism’s sake . . .’ and ‘for one of . . .’: ibid., p. 523.
p.
12
‘the glory of . . .’ and ‘to make a . . .’: ibid., p. 524.
p.
13
‘countrymen an example . . .’: Agnes Egerton-Castle, ‘The Precursor’,
The Treasure
, January 1916, pp. 71–2,
quoted by Huntford, ibid., p. 528.
p.
13n
‘a special effort . . .’ and ‘An Exhibition of . . .’: Annual Report of the Church Crafts League, quoted by Catherine
Moriarty, ‘Christian Iconography and First World War Memorials’, in the
Imperial War Museum Review
, no. 6, p. 67.
p.
13n
‘to secure combined . . .’: Quoted by Bob Bushaway, ‘Name upon Name: The Great War and Remembrance’, in Roy Porter (ed.),
Myths of the English
, p. 144.
p.
14
‘simplicity of statement . . .’: A. C. Benson, quoted by Bushaway, ibid., p. 146.
p.
15
‘The graveyards, haphazard . . .’: Clayre Percy and Jane Ridley (eds.),
The Letters of Edwin Lutyens to his Wife Emily
(Collins, 1985), p. 350.
p.
16
For a history of the War Graves Commission see Philip Longworth,
The Unending Vigil
, Constable, 1967.
p.
17
‘the image of . . .’:
Fallen Soldiers
, p. 39. For a fuller account of changing attitudes to death and cemetery design etc., see
ibid., pp. 39–45.
p.
18
Statistics for burials in the Somme are from Martin and Mary Middlebrook,
The Somme Battlefields
, pp. 9–10.
p.
20
p. 20 ‘“The future!” . . .’:
Under Fire
, pp. 256–7.
p.
20n
‘What kind of . . .’: quoted by Alistair Horne in
The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916
, p. 341.
p.
21
‘“It’ll be . . .’ and ‘sorrowfully, like a . . .’: pp. 327–8.
p.
21
‘What passing-bells for . . .’: ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’,
Collected Poems
, p. 44.
p.
21
‘“We
shall
forget . . .’:
Under Fire
, p. 328.
p.
22
‘Remembering, we forget’: ‘To One Who was With Me in the War’,
Collected Poems 1908–1956
, p. 187.
p.
22
‘We’re forgetting-machines . . .’:
Under Fire
, p. 328.
p.
22
‘How the future . . .’: The Owen manuscript is reproduced by Dominic Hibberd in
Wilfred Owen: The Last Year
, p. 123.
p.
23
‘no dividends from . . .’:
Collected Poems 1908–1956
, p. 71.
p.
23
‘Have you forgotten . . .’, ‘Look down, and . . .’ and ‘Do you remember . . .’: ibid., pp. 118–19.
p.
24
‘Make them forget’: ibid., p. 201.
p.
24
‘gather[ed] to itself . . .’:
The Challenge of the Dead
, p. 173.
p.
24
‘some tribute to . . .’: quoted by David Cannadine, ‘Death, Grief and Mourning in Modern Britain’, in Joachim Whalley (ed.)
Mirrors of Mortality
, p. 220. I have also drawn on Cannadine’s essay more generally in this section.
p.
24
‘by the human . . .’: quoted by Cannadine, ibid., p. 221.
p.
25
‘the great awful . . .’:
The Times
, 12 November 1919, p. 15.
p.
26n
‘In the tarpaper . . .’:
USA
(Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1966), pp. 722–3. I am grateful to Nick Humphrey for putting me on
to this passage.
p.
27
‘the man who . . .’: Ronald Blythe,
The Age of Illusion
, new edn (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1983), p. 9. Blythe’s
first chapter contains a detailed and evocative account of how the idea of burying an unknown soldier came about.
p.
27
‘In silence, broken . . .’, et al.: Armistice Day Supplement,
The Times
, 12 November 1920, pp. i–iii.
p.
28
‘All this was . . .’: quoted in David Cannadine, ‘Death, Grief and Mourning in Modern Britain’, in Joachim Whalley (ed.),
Mirrors of Mortality
, p. 224.
p.
28
Fabian Ware: quoted in Cannadine, ibid., p. 197.
p.
30
The draft of Owen’s ‘Apologia Pro Poemate Meo’ is reproduced in Dominic Hibberd,
Wilfred Owen: The Last Year
, p. 74.
p.
30
‘was a silence . . .’: ‘The Untellable’,
New Society
, 11 May 1978, p. 317.
p.
31
‘the very pulse . . .’: Armistice Day Supplement, 12 November 1920, p. i.
p.
31
For fuller accounts of the evolution of the various rituals of Remembrance see the works listed in the Select Bibliography by Bob Bushaway, David
Cannadine, George Mosse and Richard Garrett.
p.
32n
‘treated as part . . .’:
Fallen Soldiers
, p. 49. For a thorough discussion of changing attitudes to the war dead see ibid.,
pp. 3–50.
p.
34
‘Horrible beastliness of . . .’: from Owen’s draft list of contents for his proposed book of poems, reproduced by Dominic Hibberd,
Wilfred Owen: The Last Year
, p. 123.
p.
35
‘grimly appalling . . .’ and ‘the very depths . . .’:
Images of Wartime
, p. 50.
p.
35
‘The main purpose . . .’:
The Body in Pain
, p. 63. I am grateful to Valentine Cunningham for bringing this book to my
attention.
p.
35
‘before the Great . . .’:
The Old Lie
, p. 137.
p.
36
‘begloried sonnets’ and ‘second-hand phrases’:
Collected Works
, p. 237.
p.
36
‘part of the . . .’:
The Art of Ted Hughes
, 2nd edn (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1978), p. 30.
p.
38
‘how great a . . .’: from Blunden’s Memoir of Owen, reproduced in Wilfred Owen,
Collected Poems
, p. 147 (my italics).
p.
38
‘even the men . . .’: ‘My Country Right or Left’,
The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters
, vol. 1, pp.
589–90.
p.
38
‘we young writers . . .’, et al.:
Lions and Shadows
, pp. 74–6.
p.
39
‘became conscious of . . .’ and ‘was that it . . .’: George
Orwell,
The Collected Essays,
Journalism and Letters
, vol. 1, pp. 589–90.
p.
39
‘came home deepest . . .’: from introduction in Wilfred Owen,
Collected Poems
, p. 12.
p.
39
‘easy acceptance of . . .’: Edward Mendelson (ed.),
The English Auden: Poems, Essays and Dramatic Writings
1927–1939
(Faber, 1977), p. 212.
p.
39
‘the propagandist lie . . .’: quoted in Samuel Hynes.
The Auden Generation
, p. 249.
p.
39
‘produced envy rather . . .’ and ‘Even in our . . .’:
Friends Apart
, p. 91.
p.
40
‘An Unveiling’:
Collected Poems
, p. 204.
p.
41
‘a real Cenotaph’: quoted by Christopher Ridgeway in introduction to Richard Aldington,
Death of a Hero.
p.
41
‘a memorial in . . .’:
Death of a Hero
, p. 8.
p.
41
‘What passing-bells for . . .’:
Collected Poems
, p. 44.
p.
42
‘the official record . . .’ and ‘vetted so as . . .’:
Haig’s Command
, p. 4. For counter-charges concerning
Winter’s own manipulation of his material see John Hussey, ‘The Case Against Haig: Mr Denis Winter’s Evidence’,
Stand To: The Journal of the Western Front
Association
(winter 1992), pp. 15–17.
p.
42
‘passive suffering . . .’: from introduction to
Oxford Book of Modern Verse
(Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1936), p.
xxxiv.
p.
43
‘records of [Owen’s] . . .’: facsimile edition reprinted by the Imperial War Museum 1990, p. v.
p.
43
‘almost a spirit . . .’: ‘The Real Wilfred’,
Required Writing
, p. 230.
p.
43
‘existed for some . . .’: ibid., p. 228.
p.
43
‘the pall of . . .’: David Cannadine, ‘Death, Grief and Mourning in Modern Britain’, in Joachim Whalley (ed.),
Mirrors
of Mortality
, p. 233.
p.
44
For more on spiritualism in the 1920s see David Cannadine, ibid., pp. 227–31.
p.
44
‘prophecies in reverse . . .’:
Camera Lucida
(Hill & Wang, New York, 1981), p. 87.
p.
44
‘I began to . . .’: ‘To Please a Shadow’,
Less than One
(Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1987), p. 370.
p.
44
‘W. O. seems . . .’: letter to Robert Conquest, 9 January 1975, in Anthony Thwaite (ed.)
Selected Letters
(Faber, 1992), p.
519.
p.
44
‘Grey monotony lending . . .’: P. J. Kavanagh (ed.),
Collected Poems
, p. 36.
p.
44
‘I again work . . .’: Felix Klee (ed.)
Diaries 1898–1918
(University of California Press, Berkeley, 1964), p. 380.
p.
45
‘great sunk silences’: Isaac Rosenberg, ‘Dead Man’s Dump’,
Collected Works
, p. 111.
p.
45
‘Those Harmsworth books . . .’:
Collected Poems
(Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1983), p. 40.
p.
45
‘sepia November . . .’:
New and Collected Poems
(Robson Books, 1980), p. 63.
p.
45
‘in black and . . .’:
The Post-Modernist Always Rings Twice
(Fourth Estate, 1992), p. 79.
p.
45
‘Having seen all . . .’: Wilfred Owen, ‘Insensibility’,
Collected Poems
, p. 37.
p.
45
‘the choice of . . .’: ‘Vlamertinghe: Passing the Château, July, 1917’,
Undertones of War
, p. 256.
p.
45
‘The year itself . . .’:
The Wars
, p. 11.
p.
46
‘long uneven lines . . .’:
Collected Poems
(Faber, 1988), p. 128.
p.
46
‘The Send-Off’:
Collected Poems
, p. 46.
p.
47
‘Agony stares from . . .’: Edmund Blunden, ‘The Zonnebeke Road’,
Undertones of War
, p. 250.
p.
47
For a fuller account of restrictions on photographers see Jane Carmichael,
First World War Photographers
, pp. 11–21.
p.
48
‘In the account . . .’: the German Field Marshal was Paul Von Hindenberg, quoted in Peter Vansittart,
Voices from the Great
War
, p. 145.
p.
48
‘lay three or . . .’: Peter Vansittart (ed.),
Letters from the Front
(Constable, 1984), p. 209.
p.
49
‘Where do they . . .’: quoted in Jon Glover and Jon Silkin (eds.),
The Penguin Book of First World War Prose
, p. 63.
p.
50
‘of the very . . .’ and ‘an incomprehensible look . . .’:
Collected Letters
, p. 521.
p.
50
Owen quoting Tagore: Jon Stallworthy,
Wilfred Owen
, p. 267.
p.
50
‘As under a . . .’: ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’,
Collected Poems
, p. 55.
p.
50
‘indirectly by watching . . .’: letter to Susan Owen, 4 (or 5) October 1918,
Collected Letters
, p. 580.
p.
50
‘I saw their . . .’: ‘The Show’,
Collected Poems
, p. 50.
p.
51
‘O Love, your . . .’: ‘Greater Love’ ibid., p. 41.
p.
51
‘“O sir, my . . .’: ‘The Sentry’, ibid., p. 61.
p.
51
‘If in some . . .’: ibid., p. 55.
p.
51
‘not concerned with . . .’: ‘Preface’,
Collected Poems
, p. 31.
p.
51
‘not interested in . . .’: quoted in Richard Whelan,
Robert Capa: A Biography
, p. 176.
p.
52
‘were swarming with . . .’: ibid., p. 235.
p.
55
‘Tenderness: something on . . .’: from Henri Barbusse’s
War Diary
, in Jon Glover and Jon Silkin (eds.),
The Penguin
Book of First World War Prose
, p. 195.
p.
55
‘I tell you . . .’, ‘could not cry . . .’, et al.: Erich Maria Remarque,
All Quiet on the Western Front
, pp.
46–7.