Last time
We got up early this morning and ate a brisk breakfast. Then we packed our bags
and set out in a more or less dead straight line west-north-west towards the
Channel ports. Our intention was to go by as direct a route as possible, while
visiting two cemeteries where members of my family who died in the
First World
War are commemorated. Our route brought us onto what is presumably a
Roman
road, running in a dead straight line through
Cambrai and
la Capelle on the
way to
Arras. We didn't actually go all the way to Arras, as our first stop
was at
Vis-en-Artois British military cemetery. Despite the name, this
graveyard is not in Vis-en-Artois, but in the neighbouring village of
Haucourt. The relative of my father whose memorial we had come to see went
missing in action, and so no grave in the vast cemetery bore his name. He may
lie there though, for all we know, because many of the gravestones simply
read:
A SOLIDER OF THE GREAT WAR
KNOWN UNTO GOD
At the back of the cemetery, beyond the hundreds of graves, is a white stone
wall, with two large
pylons set in it. From the road, the wall appears
unmarked, but by the time one has walked two-thirds of the way through the
graveyard, it becomes apparent that it is not. Every major vertical surface of
the monument is covered in names, carved in letters two inches high, and closely
packed. This is not even one of the great, famous memorials to the missing, like
that at
Thiepval or the
Menin Gate at
Ypres. Yet thousands of names are
inscribed on it, each one a solider - or a seaman, like my relation - who went
into battle and was never seen again.
Our second stop was at
Béthune, where my grandfather's adoptive father is buried in the town cemetery, along with
many others who died in the military hospital there. It took us a while to find
the cemetery, since the directions we'd got from the
Commonwealth War Graves
website had been originally written in about
1920. We asked at the local
bakery, but none of the four or five employees seemed to know the location of
their town's large public cemetery. Eventually, we figured it out using a map in
a bus shelter. The cemetery turned out to be so close to the bakery, the staff
could have walked down there in a coffee break. The war graves were at the far
end, past rank after rank of polished grey headstones with gold lettering,
ostentatious family tombs with colour pictures, and several
gothic
mausoleums with plate-glass patio doors. It was almost a relief to reach the
simplicity of the military section. The majority of those buried there - several
thousand - were
British, but there were also considerable numbers of
French,
and some
German soldiers. Among the British dead were several
Hindus, with
distinctive bilingual headstones, and both French and British areas included
several
Muslims. One British officer had been
Jewish. We found the grave we
were looking for among the rows of similar, but far from identical British army
headstones, each one carved with a regimental badge. After a few moments'
reflection, we headed back, pausing by the memorial
columbarium designed by
Edwin Lutyens to look in the register. 'Died of wounds' said most of the
records, including the one for the grave we had seen. We wondered if it was
better to die slowly 'of wounds', but with some form of care, or suddenly on the
battlefield. There is not easy answer.
Then we went on, to the
Channel Tunnel terminal at
Coquelles, near
Calais.
We spent our last
Euros on
brie salad sanwiches, which we ate on the train.
The weather was not good, and we wondered what would happen to my brother's
school trip, who were returning from
Flanders by
ferry at about the same
time. Once we had got home and had a little dinner, we got an answer. They had
been delayed by the high winds, and would be two hours late. This left us
somewhat at a loose end for the next couple of hours, and I decided to read my
email and log onto E2 after four days' absence. I was much too tired to node,
however, and had work the next morning, which is why these four daylogs are so
late.