.

Soon it will be Armistice Day marking the end of the terrible conflict in Europe

when our soldiers bled with yours.

Iain and Margaret

Hi everybody,

A WEE surprise from Iain and Margaret was waiting for us in the mailbox yesterday… a BIG wee surprise I must say 😉 and another one from Janice too! WOW! It’s so very kind of them! And it came at a time when I needed something to cheer me up after a crash of my computer had let me in a very bad mood and with lots of problems to solve!

We found treasures on opening our packets and I will share them with you soon: Iain and Margaret sent us a very interesting book about the Auld Alliance 😉 and also a funny little volume containing an article about George Mackay Brown, my very favourite Scottish author. As for Janice, she sent me a book containing a beautifully illustrated Irish ghost story. She knows how I do love ghost stories 😉 and with Christmas approaching , it’s a good time to read ghost stories, isn’t it? 😉 Of course, you’ve not forgotten Dickens’s famous and marvellous Christmas Carol. Indeed, George Mackay Brown who wrote a great number of short stories did write a few excellent ghost stories too.

But an article sent by Iain & Margaret quickly drew my attention. It was entitled «The unknown soldier : how a corpse became the focus of a nation’s grief». Our friends have an extraordinary sense of ‘à propos’ often sending us cards, books or documents which recall the stories of great people and events just before anniversary dates. This time we were about to celebrate the Armistice Day.

The unknown soldier - The Week 15 November 2008 1

 ‘As an outpouring of public grief, only the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, has ever matched it.’

The unknown soldier - The Week 15 November 2008 2

I sat in front of the fire and soon got deeply immersed in this article, trying to imagine the hell into which so many people had been precipitated. Ten million people lost their lives in WWI and many families, from all over the world, can claim as their own one or even several of the white little crosses which line on endless rows in the French military cemeteries. When I was a young girl I often wondered about the big portrait of a handsome young soldier hanging on the wall in the room where we slept during the holidays at my grandmother’s house. I soon learned that it was the portrait of her first husband. She never spoke of him but I know it took years to find his body on the battlefield where he had been buried bayonet in hand during a shell attack. They have been able to identify him thanks to his number plate and his portrait had been done well before his body was found.

Life and Nothing But Bertrand Tavernier film 1989

There is a very beautiful film by Bertrand Tavernier with Philippe Noiret and Sabine Azéma about the search and identification of WWI lost soldiers.

I’ve chosen a few interesting extracts from the article:

In November 1920, the decomposed corpse of an unidentified British soldier was sent to London, to be entombed amid much pomp and solemn ceremony in Westminster Abbey. John Preston recounts the story of the Unknown Warrior.

On the stroke of midnight on 7 November, 1920, Brigadier General L.J. Wyatt, General Officer Commanding British Troops in France and Flanders, entered a hut near the village of St Pol, near Ypres in northern France. In front of him were the remains of four bodies, all of them lying under Union flags. Earlier that afternoon, the bodies had been disinterred from unmarked graves in each of the main battlefields: the Aisne, the Somme, Arras and Ypres. Four blank crosses had been chosen from the forest of crosses that now covered the shell-pocked French landscape.

Wrapped in old sacks, the four dead soldiers had been brought to St Pol, where they were received by a British clergyman and two undertakers who had travelled to France for the occasion. The exhumation party had been ordered to find bodies of men who had died early in the War, to ensure they had sufficiently decomposed so as to be unidentifiable. Nevertheless, the bodies were inspected again, for identifying marks, then placed inside the hut for the rest of the day. Wyatt stepped into the hut as midnight struck. He lifted up his lantern to take in the scene. Then he simply reached out and touched one of the Union flags. That was it; he had made his choice. He had picked a body to go inside the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior.

In death, the body was to enjoy a fate that would, in all probability, have been unthinkable in life. Feted by the King-Emperor, attended with the most lavish pomp and solemn ceremony that the country could muster, this collection of bones was about to become the focus of a nation’s grief (..)

Amid all the public anguish, no one thought to wonder what had become of the other three bodies that had been disinterred from their unmarked graves. A rather less exalted fate awaited them. After Wyatt had made his choice, the Union Flags were folded away. Then the three bodies were loaded onto the back of a truck, tipped into a shell hole beside the road near the town of Albert – and promptly forgotten.

 

“I’ve found on You Tube an interesting video based on historical documents which perfectly illustrates this horrible page of history.

Unknown Soldier’ after WWI .A tree is felled from the grounds of Hampton Palace. It is made into a coffin of English Oak. Fixed atop is a 16th century crusaders sword, taken from the Tower of London.

A British soldier, unknown by name or rank, is exhumed from the battlefields of World War 1.

In France 1000 school children form a mile long procession in front of his coffin.
In England a King and Country wait to honour him. A cenotaph is unveiled to him and all the glorious dead.”

(Comment from Psari)

Tomb of the Unknown Warrior Westminster Abbey London

BENEATH THIS STONE RESTS THE BODY
OF A BRITISH WARRIOR
UNKNOWN BY NAME OR RANK
BROUGHT FROM FRANCE TO LIE AMONG
THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS OF THE LAND
AND BURIED HERE ON ARMISTICE DAY
11 NOV: 1920, IN THE PRESENCE OF
HIS MAJESTY KING GEORGE V
HIS MINISTERS OF STATE
THE CHIEFS OF HIS FORCES
AND A VAST CONCOURSE OF THE NATION

THUS ARE COMMEMORATED THE MANY
MULTITUDES WHO DURING THE GREAT
WAR OF 1914 – 1918 GAVE THE MOST THAT
MAN CAN GIVE LIFE ITSELF
FOR GOD
FOR KING AND COUNTRY
FOR LOVED ONES HOME AND EMPIRE
FOR THE SACRED CAUSE OF JUSTICE AND
THE FREEDOM OF THE WORLD

THEY BURIED HIM AMONG THE KINGS BECAUSE HE
HAD DONE GOOD TOWARD GOD AND TOWARD
HIS HOUSE

‘On the morning of 10 November, the coffin was taken to Boulogne. With it were six barrels of earth from the fields of Flanders. In Boulogne, the mile-long cortège passed through the streets of the town to the strains of a military band playing Chopin’s Funeral March.

From Piano Sonata Op.35 No.2 played by Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli

A Very Long Engagement Jean-Pierre Jeunet 2004

Some random principle wanders through the world,

choosing people for no good reason and plunging them into hell (…)

Hell, hell, hell, hell, hell.

(John Burnside – Glister)

Let us end on a more sentimental note. I’ve seen this film. It’s a very moving one. Some passages about war in the trenches are so hard to watch that I nearly went out of the cinema in the middle of the film. Nevertheless it’s a great film with remarkable actors. It won many awards.

Many thanks to Iain and Margaret for having shared with us this article on that particular day. Let us pass the message, how sad it be, lest we forget our soldiers who fell on France and Flanders fields…

A bientôt.

Mairiuna