FRIDAY JULY 1st 2016
We spend the day at Thiepval–witnessing the centenary commemoration of the Battle of The Somme.
It is a brilliantly organized event, attended by the great and the good…
and 10,000 of the rest of us, sitting facing the enormous monument designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens.
At 7h30 on the the first of July 1916–100 years ago this day–the first soldier went over the top in a battle that would last into November.
Close to 20 thousand British troops were killed that first day.
In all, the Battle of the Somme cost a million Allied and German lives–combined.
Slaughter on that scale–the morass of mud and murder in July 1916–is hard to grasp.
The full horror–the physical nightmare of being there–impossible to experience; viewable, but at once removed, in contemporary photos, in books and museums.
We can only gasp at the sheer scale of it.
Below is a map showing the cemeteries that are located in the area of the conflict–280 of them.
The vast monument at Thiepval was finished and inaugurated in 1932 in the presence of the previous Prince of Wales–and just seven years before Europe was again engulfed in flames.
The size of this elephantine, enigmatic building–(the finished version was smaller than he had originally envisaged) seems to echo the enormity of the disaster it represents. Was that Sir Edwin’s intention?
It can be seen for miles around beaming out its message of remembrance–“Lest we forget” over the now benign landscape.
On it are inscribed the names of the Allied dead–below, a part of the wall devoted to names of the 72 thousand soldiers missing in action.
As the ceremony came to a close and taking their cue from a heavy shower minutes before, poppy shaped pieces of paper, representing the fallen, rain down from high on the tower.
Blue for France; red for Great Britain.
We added a wreath of poppies to the many at the Memorial Cross.
Our inscription: When will we ever learn?
Inspired by Pete Seeger’s famous song:
Where have all the soldiers gone, long time passing?
Where have all the soldiers gone, long time ago?
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Gone to graveyards, everyone.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?Where have all the graveyards gone, long time passing?
Where have all the graveyards gone, long time ago?
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Gone to flowers, everyone.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Robin Ellis 
Very moving Robin, thank you. Tx
Sent from my iPad
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Thank you, Theresa.
Much appreciated.
Beautiful and moving. Here’s a friend’s blog with further material for thought:
https://bryanalexander.org/2016/07/01/it-was-our-old-blood-bath-the-somme/
Ellen
Thanks, Ellen.
The ceremony must have been inexpressibly moving. It is just not possible to grasp how dreadful the Great War was – I have my great uncle’s US Army discharge papers, indicating he received a medal for the Big Push in 1918, but I am told he was shattered for the remainder of his life (not long). What a waste of fine young men.
I understand that a German humor magazine ran a contest in the 1920s for the most improbable newspaper headline. The winner: Archduke Found Alive, World War Fought In Error.
oh, that’s prime for a statement of futility and waste.
Marina in San Jose
I can here Peter, Paul, and the late Mary singing that song in the background of my mind. Today here in America July 4th we too remember but for us we remember those who faught for freedom. I had three great, great, great, great, great-grandfathers who served and survived the price for freedom.
Thank you for this fine remembrance and the photos. You are our Roving Euro reporters and I appreciate all your posts.
Yes, alas!! When will we ever learn? It seems like nothing has really changed; just the superficial.
I saw the memorial building you show on the news. For some reason it, reminds me of hybrid anglo-Indian buildings one might see in India…Do you see this too?
Today is July 4. I am lucky and happy to be living in the U.S. though I love France and Italy. Have you seen A French Village—it is running on public televisions via Mhz here. WOW–see this series if you can—starring Audrey Fleurot, Thierry Godard and many other French notables. It’s an amazing story about the Vichy line area after Germans invaded it “Villeneuve” they call it but I don’t know if that is the actual name.
I pray for peace everywhere. But how are we to make it happen?
Stevie de Longmont
Thanks for the tip, Stevie–we don’t know the series.
“When will they ever learn?”…..the older I get, the more I fear the answer is “Probably never”. But a small part of me remains optimistic, hoping for an epiphany in the general public that carries through to the politicians…..
Thank you Robin.
We commemorated here on the island. The Somme is something that is with me everyday. Growing up, my mum and her brother (who lived with us) would regularly talk about their father and his two brothers who were in the Somme. Their father was injured with shrapnel in the brain, so he had problems, but the two brothers, Samuel Marr and Arthur Marr were ‘blown to bits’. Hearing these word as a child ‘blown to bits’ stays with you’ .My mother and uncle’s childhood went on to be affected by their fathers injuries and is something which went on to affect me. Over the years I have studied much about the WW1 in general and this horrendous war is something I think of most days. It has tought me so much about life and what it is to be ‘a good person’ and appreciate what we have. So thank you for sharing and blessings.
This is very moving–thank you.
Thank you for the moving remembrance – & what it looks and feels like I’m Europe. Hard to grasp the enormity of the event.
I couldn’t say it better, Fran.
I appreciate your being there – representing those who can’t be at that remembrance. Just watched Testament of Youth, film based on Vera Brittain’s biography of young, British woman in 1916 era. It, too, a strong statement about the Great War and the inconceivable losses; until one stands in a sea of poppies and headstones in one of the cemeteries – it must hit home in harsh reality.
Yes. When will they ever learn??? I do my best to pass it on
British headteacher, Bangkok
I can’t imagine the enormity of the tragedy. How beautiful that you could participate in this remembrance.
My Dad was a Normandy veteran of the Second World War, and I am eternally grateful for the sacrifice of so many.
For the last 2 years we’ve spent our holiday in the Picardie. We visited many sites regarding the Great War, including Thiepval. We walked in the trenches, on a sunny day, birds singing, tourists making selfies…..hard to believe that people were killed there. I would recommend a visit to Ors, where Wilfred Owen is buried, and the house in the forest where he stayed before he died.
Thank you for attending the service at Thiepval. I watched the whole ceremony on BBC and found it incredibly moving. Thank you for being there on behalf of all of us who were not able to be present.
Thanks for this Arlene.
Thank you for your lovely remembrance post, Robin. I would like to tell your American readers, that there is a National World War One museum in Kansas City, Mo., located at Pershing and Main Streets, and built underground, under the Liberty Memorial tower. The Liberty Memorial is the national WWI monument, and was dedicated on Nov. 11, 1926. The museum opened in 2006 and has one of the largest collections of WWI artifacts. I spent the whole day there a few years ago. Their website is http://www.theworldwar.org It has become one of the most visited tourist sites in Kansas City.
Thank you, Luanne.
Thank you for that beautiful tribute Robin. Many young Australians also died in the Battle of the Somme – such a long way from their home.
Thank you Robin for your article. And for sharing with everyone. I had two great uncles that were in The Battle of the Somme. Although they didn’t know that they were both there until some 40 years later when they had meant up again and were talking about their Great War experiences. One Uncle had survived the sinking of the Tuscania before being sent on to the Continent. Such a great loss for the whole world. I don’t know if you have ever read Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth, but I think she epitomized that time where so many of the young men were lost. So very sad. Kind Regards. Carol
Can you imagine the guts it took to top that hill and charge forward? Ugh.
Very informative, Robin, and nice pics of such a sad memorial…
I agree with others who appreciate you covering history in your area, and a bit beyond.
“Gone to soldiers, every one” has been going through my mind of late, too, and because I am a “folkie”, I have a bit more info on that song, via Wikipedia:
“Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” is a modern folk-style song. The melody and the first three verses were written by Pete Seeger in 1955 and published in Sing Out! magazine. Additional verses were added by Joe Hickerson in May 1960, who turned it into a circular song. Its rhetorical “where?” and meditation on death place the song in the ubi sunt tradition. In 2010, the New Statesman listed it as one of the “Top 20 Political Songs”.
The 1964 release of the song as a Columbia Records 45 single, 13-33088, by Pete Seeger was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2002 in the Folk category.
Seeger found inspiration for the song in October 1955 while he was on a plane bound for a concert at Oberlin College, one of the few venues which would hire him during the McCarthy era. Leafing through his notebook he saw the passage, “Where are the flowers, the girls have plucked them. Where are the girls, they’ve all taken husbands. Where are the men, they’re all in the army.” These lines were taken from the traditional Cossack folk song “Koloda-Duda”, referenced in the Mikhail Sholokhov novel And Quiet Flows the Don (1934), which Seeger had read “at least a year or two before”.
A later song written by Scotsman Eric Bogle, who moved to Australia in his youth commemorates the death of a particular soldier, at his graveside:
“No Man’s Land” (also known as “The Green Fields of France” or “Willie McBride”). Says Eric, “It’s a song that was written about the military cemeteries in Flanders and Northern France. In 1976, my wife and I went to three or four of these military cemeteries and saw all the young soldiers buried there.”
If you aren’t familiar with it, visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqVGshDc-CM. There are other versions of it, sung by Eric or by others, to be found there. In the live version in this 2009 video, Eric told an audience in Weymouth that he’d read about a girl who had been presented with a copy of the song by then prime minister Tony Blair, who called it “his favourite anti-war poem”. According to Eric, the framed copy of the poem was credited to him, but stated that he had been killed in World War I.
He has another well-known anti-war song about the Crimean War and the ANZACs, “And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda” (1971), which has also been thought by some to have been written near the year of the battle at Gallipoli, by someone long dead–good songwriters can have that effect on people! The song describes war as futile and gruesome, while criticising those who seek to glorify it. This is exemplified in the song by the account of a young Australian soldier who is maimed at the Battle of Gallipoli during the First World War.
A couple of years after arriving in Australia, Bogle found himself at a Remembrance Day parade in Canberra and the song was the result of that event. The song was written in the space of two weeks. Interviewed in 2009 for The Scotsman, he said:
“I wrote it as an oblique comment on the Vietnam War which was in full swing… but while boys from Australia were dying there, people had hardly any idea where Vietnam was. Gallipoli was a lot closer to the Australian ethos – every schoolkid knew the story, so I set the song there. … At first the Returned Service League and all these people didn’t accept it at all; they thought it was anti-soldier, but they’ve come full circle now and they see it’s certainly anti-war but not anti-soldier.”
Written in 1971, the song’s resonance with the US Vietnam campaign has not been missed, as it rails against the romanticising of war. As the old man sits on his porch, watching the veterans march past every Anzac Day, he muses: “The young people ask what are they marching for, and I ask myself the same question”.
It’s been covered a lot, and just-retired MPR host Garrison Keillor wrote a US version, also set in WWI. The lyrics are here: http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/programs/2004/05/29/scripts/starspangled.shtml
When it will change, I cannot say. I think we need Departments of Peace.
I shall listen a bit later but than you very much for this.
Well written. The song was one of my mother’s favourites….”When will they ever learn?”
Thank you for your post Robin, yes when will they ever learn it would seam never. As I have posted before I had two uncles who were there both came home but not unscathed, one was gassed, when has a kid I sat in his knee I could hear his chest bubbling, and Robert had no finger tips from being a prisoner in the salt mines on the eastern front,though they both had families and lived into old age there was always a sadness about them. I don’t suppose you ever forgot going through a hell like that. I read once that someone who had survived said that they always felt guilty about doing so, when so many had not.
There was a service at Manchester cathedral which is just on the boundary with Salford, The Salford pals. In a beautiful church on the Salford side not far away is the grave of Edith Cavell .Let us hope that we will learn..
.e
Je suis tout a fait d’accord avec toi, Elaine.
Thank you.
My Great Grandfather died at the Battle of the Somme, Sgt Robert Wood as did his son just 3 weeks later Private Sonny Wood. The Lost Generation, its why we can never forget, the war to end all wars which actually didn’t because of we went again in 1939, proving that we do not learn
Robin, thank you for sharing this day with us. I have visited the Thiepval memorial and walked through parts of the battlefield several times when passing through The Somme en route to happier parts of France. I am always thankful and grateful for the peace in Europe which I and my children have experienced for the last 70 years.
Hello Richard–yes it is a sobering experience to be there. All politicians who might send men and women into harms way should be obliged to visit.
oh, yes.
Marina in San Jose, catching up with unread emails.
Robin,
Thank you for bringing awareness to this important moment in history. Honoring the fallen regardless of which side they fought for brings us closer to creating a world of tolerance and understanding.
You have a big heart and I hope your message reaches far and wide.
Best Regards.
Nancy Moxon
U.S.A.
Hi Robin. This ceremony was a wonderful tribute indeed, and how lovely you were able to go. I did manage to see this on catch up TV. Amazing music too! Very moving. We just all have to hope nothing like this ever happens again when human beings have a huge capacity to love!
Wonderful to meet you and Meredith in Doncaster by the way. Sorry I have not been in touch before now. We have had a difficult time since then but coming through everything now. Best wishes always, Heidi
I haven’t thanked you for your very kind present in Doncaster, Heidi–we enjoyed it!
Pleased you enjoyed it Robin x
A moving, heart-breaking account. Thank you, Robin.
It does make one wonder, though, about the relative “merits” of officially sanctioned warfare vs. the kind of random acts of terrorism so rampant today, e.g., the Boston Marathon massacre, the Charlie Hebdo massacre, San Bernadino (CA) and on and on to the latest in Orlando, Florida. In all of these innocent people of all ages and genders were killed and maimed. Question: Which is “better” – slaughters like those of WWI or today’s senseless terrorist attacks, often carried out by just a few fanatics?
Nancy, NM
Robin
Here is a link to the Mhz program A French Village [which is now in its 3rd season] in case it would be helpful for you to locate. –Stevie
http://mhznetworks.us8.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=0ecaad2639254f78a4fff4589&id=472b9d5785&e=e14dab65bd
Thank you, Stevie.
Thank you, Robin, for your beautifully-written, thoughtful meditation on this day of remembrance.
terrible… touching… I’m afraid we will never learn….
I have a book written by the poet John Masefield titled ‘The Old Front Line’. That ‘line’ was where the battle of the Somme was launched. Masefield wrote the book in 1917 to give a description of the place for those who would visit the battlefield and in turn see where there fathers, husbands, sons and brothers died and were buried. His last paragraph follows:
‘The men of the first wave climbed up the parapets, in tumult, darkness and the presence of death, and having done with all pleasant things, advanced across No Man’s Land to begin the battle of the Somme’.
And with that readers have to be completely lost as the soldiers go and take their deadly paths keeping secrets that they only themselves can know about their vicious experiences. One must wonder really hiw human beings can endure under those circumstances.
Rich
Amen to Rich’s comment above.
Robin, I am overcome by this post. Being English-born and bred in Torquay, but having lived in the USA 53 years, posts such as this make me cognizant of the fact my ancestors helped save Great Britain then, just as my parents did in the early ’40’s when they were both in the Royal Air Force. How heartbreaking that service you shared in must have been knowing SO MANY were killed. Thank you for sharing with us – both your profound words and great photos.
Great news here yesterday when PBS announced Poldark is going into production with Series 3!!! Hope you continue to be in it – seeing you is still exciting, I so loved ‘your’ Poldark all those years ago! I just hope your lovely wife doesn’t mind knowing how many women were ‘in love’ with you, haha! Of course we still have to view Series 2 later this year in the US – and can hardly wait!
Robin, I’ve been trying to subscribe to your great blog via e-mail (I don’t do Facebook) but so far it hasn’t worked – perhaps you can help fix this please.
Mary in North Carolina –
Mary–thank you for your kind words.
I don’t know why subscribing is not working for you. I will consult with Meredith and see if she has an idea.
Mary–in the righthand column of the blog there is a box that says–email subscription. Fill in your details and this should work.
Thank you Robin – I’ve signed up again and will know if it’s going to work when you do another post.
Meanwhile, my heart is broken over the events last night in Nice. Again that line, “when will we ever learn” comes to mind. I hear politicians now saying this is another war to be fought.
Just hope you are safe – checked with my family, they stayed close to home and celebrated in Carcassonne where, thankfully, nothing bad happened.
Mary –
Sobering post, Robin. Have you found the website thesomme19240.co.uk yet? It is a huge artwork of individually sculpted figures, all shrouded. They were laid in Northernhay Gardens in Exeter on July 1st, the number 19240 being the death toll on that ONE day in 1916.
When you see that many figures en masse it gives an idea of how many young lives were uselessly lost.
As usual, you provide a thought provoking few words.
Thanks Sophie Jane.
who is the hatted lady under the dome parapluie in IMG_5437?
Marina in San Jose