First impressions

After months and even years of planning and anticipation, my trip with my sister to the battlefields of the Western Front proved to be a hugely interesting and deeply moving experience. After three packed days of visits, two of them in glorious sunshine and the third in the snow, we travelled back to the UK last Friday, tired but very content.

Next morning DH collected me and drove me home, with my head whirling with a kaleidoscope of impressions, my camera laden with almost 450 images, my suitcase full of laundry and my poor lungs feeling very sorry for themselves, thanks to a nasty chest infection which ambushed me and several other members of our party partway through the trip.

It’s taking me a while to recover, but I’ve finally dealt with the laundry, downloaded the photos and am just about thinking clearly enough to start to organise all my impressions and memories. Though it feels like I have enough material for a book rather than a few blog posts, at this stage I’m not even going to use words. In their place is a selection of images, which hopefully capture something of the essence of our trip - of cemeteries and memorials, of landscapes and the remnants of war that still scar them. The words will come later, when I can find the ones I need.

Goodbyee

 As I was wandering round the house today in ever-decreasing circles, 
gathering together and packing everything I need for my trip, 
I found myself humming some of the songs of the Great War 
which still echoed through my post-WW2 childhood.

Sometimes I heard them sung at local village concerts, 
or even joined in singing them myself. 
Sometimes my grandfather would sing a snatch or two to me,
 which is how I heard the first French words I can ever remember hearing, 

Mademoiselle from Armentieres, parley-voo?

Sometimes they provided the background music
to a TV or radio programme on the First World War,
 especially the haunting 
There’s a long, long trail a-winding.

Some of them, such as Hanging on the Old Barbed Wire 

I only really heard when I was older, 
as the words wouldn’t have been considered suitable 
for me as a young child.

Some seemed to me, even then, incongruously cheerful for such a terrible event, 
until the wonderful, bitingly-satirical Oh, What a Lovely War 
gave them a context and interpretation 
which made complete sense to me. 

As I say goodbye until my return next weekend, 
I’ll leave you with one of these, 
which I’m sure will stay with me as I visit the haunted landscape 
where so many fought and died 
and pay my respects to them and to one young Yorkshireman in particular.

Image via Google

Gallivanting again…

...or another Big Birthday trip.

Almost five years ago, when my blog was still new and shiny, I wrote a post about a holiday I’d just had with DD.  2011 was the year I turned 65 and she turned 40 and to mark these momentous occurrences  we decided to go to Assisi together on a Pax Travel pilgrimage. I had been several times before and loved it, but for DD it was her first visit. On our return I shared some impressions of our experience in a post called The Big Birthday trip.

This wasn’t the first time in recent years that I’d headed off on holiday with a member of the family other than DH. The previous year, my next-to-youngest sister, PolkaDot, and I had visited Madeira only weeks after the catastrophic floods of February 2010 and, once I had a blog, of course I had to write about it. We both enjoyed our shared holiday so much that afterwards we talked several times about the possibility of repeating the experience.

In November 2011, to mark Armistice Day, I had written a post about my Great-Uncle Walter who died in the Ypres Salient in World War 1.  That sowed the seed in my mind of one day doing what PolkaDot had already done and visiting Ypres in Belgium to see his name on the Menin Gate memorial. Time went on and a couple of years later she suggested that we might like to go on holiday together in 2016 to mark two more Big Birthdays - her 65^th and my 70^th - and also the centenary of Great-Uncle Walter’s death on February 16^th.

Now February isn’t normally the time of year one would choose to holiday in Western Europe, but some things are more important that the weather. When we discovered that a holiday company had scheduled a battlefields tour that would take us to the very area where Great-Uncle Walter had been killed, on the exact anniversary of his death a century ago, the die was cast.

We booked and now I’m busy with my final preparations before DH drops me at my sister’s house on Sunday, ready for a very early start next morning on our journey to Belgium. Fortunately the local weather forecast for next week is very much better than what we’ve been enduring this week - cold and sunny, rather than wet and windy - and we’re both starting to feel very excited about Big Birthday Trip Mark 2. My camera and notebook are already packed. Less important things like clothes will come later...

The year rolls round

…and before we know it Advent is here again. I know it’s a sign of advancing age to comment on the fact, but I truly don’t know where this year has gone.  And what a year it has been.

As I write this on a dark November evening, with the wind battering the rain against the window by my desk, I am again filled with gratitude for my safe and cosy house and deeply aware that many are not so fortunate. 

I think of the thousands of refugees seeking shelter and sanctuary from the ravages of war and with foreboding of the many more who may be driven from their homes as the conflict in the Middle East intensifies. I remember with deep sadness the many lives lost or damaged in cruel attacks.

We are living through dark and difficult times and yet, as a Christian, I cannot help having hope as Advent begins. This wonderful season of anticipation, of promises made and fulfilled, of the coming of Emmanuel, God with us, reassures me that there will always be light in the darkness and that the darkness will not overcome it. This message of hope and encouragement is wonderfully summed up in one of my favourite arias from Handel’s Messiah, to me the very spirit of Advent.

Image via Google

Rising from the ashes

One of the many perennially fascinating aspects of spending part of each year in this particular part of France is the way in which the past still so tangibly impacts on the present. Two years ago I wrote a post reflecting on the irony that a lover of historic buildings like myself should have bought a house in an area where so much of the built past was wiped out in a few short weeks in the summer of 1944.

Almost every week during the summer there is a report in our local French newspaper of one commune or another holding its annual commemoration of the day it was liberated from Nazi occupation. The town or village dignitaries and a rapidly decreasing number of old soldiers gather at the war memorial, together with the school children and a good sprinkling of the population not at work, to lay flowers, make speeches and stand in silent tribute.

Some of the communes are able to give thanks that their buildings were largely or completely spared by the fighting.  Others in our immediate area hold their ceremonies of commemoration in surroundings that their ancestors would not recognise, so complete was the devastation.

On top of the ridge to the north across the valley from us is a little village called Gathemo. Sixty-nine years ago today, on the 10^th of August 1944, it was virtually wiped out in just one day of violent conflict. It wasn't a particularly pretty little place and after the war it was rebuilt as quickly and efficiently as possible, with no attempt to imitate or restore what had been lost.

To the east of Gathemo along the ridge is the small market town of Sourdeval on its high plateau. It too was almost obliterated from the map when fierce shelling caused a catastrophic fire which rapidly spread out of control until the old town centre lay in ruins. It too was rebuilt, largely on the old footprint, and when we go to the market there it is a pleasant little place to be. But there is none of the mingling of different periods of building, none of the quirky mixture of old and new, the secret little bits of history, which make most towns and villages in France and elsewhere so rewarding to explore.

Pre-war Sourdeval

A town reborn

Like so many other places on all sides of the conflict, these courageous little Norman communities had to create new identities for themselves in the aftermath of war, mourning what had been lost, but turning their faces resolutely towards a new and hopefully peaceful future.  Our Normandy idyll is rooted in a landscape that has suffered, and amidst all its quiet beauty I can never forget its turbulent and sometimes tragic history.

They shall grow not old

In the summer of 1964, when I was 18 and had just done my A-Levels, the BBC began to broadcast a very moving and detailed documentary series called The Great War, to mark the 50th  anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War.  At the time my widowed grandfather (my mother’s father) lived next-door to us.  Each week during that summer and autumn, I went round to his house to watch the new episode with him and talk to him about his memories of that same war.

Granddad had served in France throughout the war and came home with severely damaged hearing from prolonged exposure to the noise of the artillery, which it had been his job to supply with ammunition. Even worse, his whole family had been devastated by the death in action of his younger brother, the baby of the family, on 16 February 1916 at the age of 21.
 

My grandfather in uniform

Uncle Walter in uniform

Before the war Walter had been a labourer in a cement works in his native Hull. On enlistment he became a private in the 7th Battalion of the East Yorkshire Regiment and, as his medal card shows, went to France on 13 July 1915. However, Walter did not serve as a combatant, but instead as a regimental stretcher-bearer, as can be seen from the SB armband he wears in this photograph.

I'm indebted to our own family historian, my next-to-youngest sister, for most of this detailed and poignant information and she points out that being a stretcher-bearer was no guarantee of safety: “ It was very risky moving stretchers through the trenches, but especially trying to rescue the injured from No Man's Land.”

According to official regimental records, in the early morning of 15 February 1916, Walter’s regiment was moved up from Divisional Reserve to the Ypres Salient, to a place called The Bluff, at one end of the infamous Hill 60 and just north of the Ypres Canal. Late in the evening of the same day, the regiment took part in a poorly-planned and ineffective attempt to retake trenches captured by the Germans the previous day. 
The official account continues: 
The East Yorkshiremen were then ordered to consolidate the ground they held. The 16th was comparatively quiet. At night the Battalion was relieved and, by 5 p.m. on 17th, all Companies were back in Reninghelst.

This was the first action in which the 7th Battalion was engaged, and it is interesting to note what the C.O. said of his men in his report to Brigade H.Q. :—"l wish to express my appreciation of the excellent conduct of all ranks of the Battalion during these operations. Pelted by the snow storm, continually hampered, halted and pushed on the road by transport, soaked to the skin, ordered back on arrival and again forward on getting back, were a severe test of their soldierly qualities and which, in my opinion, they came through with credit. Later they were operating in unknown trenches, over unknown ground and under heavy shell fire most of the time and again acquitted themselves well."

The Bluff - part of the Ypres Salient

In this aerial photograph of the battlefield, taken on 20 February 1916, the frozen canal, the craters and the German trenches can clearly be seen.  The operations in the area of the Bluff, from the start of the enemy attack on 14 February to noon on 17 February, cost the British 1,294 casualties, of whom my great-uncle was just one.

Although Walter’s death was witnessed, he has no known grave, which implies either that his body was not able to be recovered from the battlefield or that his grave was subsequently lost. He is commemorated on Panel 31 of the Menin Gate Memorial at Ypres.



Walter's name on the Menin Gate Memorial



The report of Walter’s death in the Hull Daily Mail for 26 February 1916 reads: “Pte. W. Sutcliffe, a young Hull soldier of the 7th East Yorks., whose home was at 4 Earle’s-row, Wilmington, has been killed while attending a wounded comrade. An intimation has been received to this effect. Private William Nicholls, a friend in the same regiment, writes to his relatives: “He was dressing a pal’s wound when he was hit, and died a few moments later.  God bless “Jack” he has done his duty well. He was well liked by all the officers and men of the battalion.” Private Sutcliffe, who was 21, had recently been home on leave.

It’s all a very long time ago now, but the repercussions have come down through the years to this day. My memories of my grandfather, with his damaged hearing and his enduring sense of loss at the death of his brother, are still vivid. Two months after her young uncle’s death, my mother was born and a new little family looked towards the future. But there was a gap which was never filled. Rest in peace, Great-Uncle Walter. I wish I’d had the chance to know you.

My Great-Uncle Walter



My grandparents and my mother - Summer 1916



Echoes of conflict

Looking out of our living-room window at the peaceful pastoral scene beyond the garden, it's almost impossible to imagine how very different things were in this corner of Normandy nearly 70 years ago. One of the enduring fascinations of spending part of every year here is discovering the history of the place and, in particular, learning how these peaceful fields and hills and villages were so viciously fought-over in the struggle for the freedom of Europe.

It’s ironic in some ways that I, who so love ancient buildings with their profound atmosphere of history, should end up buying a cottage in an area where many (if not most) of the buildings in the little towns and villages post-date World War 2, being built to replace those which were bombed and shelled into rubble during the fighting. Even our own little house had to be partially rebuilt, after being hit by a shell in a tank battle during the German counter-attack in August 1944.

I can tell you that it is deeply sobering to pick up and browse an academic study of the campaign and see how many references there are to the battle that raged for days through our small village, as the American forces struggled to contain the German Panzer offensive. It is even more sobering to visit the war memorial in the graveyard which surrounds the rebuilt church and see how many civilians from the village’s tiny population are listed alongside those who fell in battle.

The old church in the early 20th century

Drawing of the rebuilt church

On Wednesdays we often go to the big weekly market at the nearby town of Saint-Hilaire-du-Harcouët. With a population of about 5000 it’s one of the largest of the market towns in this sparsely-populated area, though by English standards it's little more than a large village. Yet because of its strategic position on a crossroads between important north-south and east-west roads, the centre of this small town was virtually destroyed in a single night, when on June 14^th 1944 the Americans bombed it as part of the Allied effort to disrupt road and rail links and prevent the enemy bringing more supplies and troops to the front. The same story can be told of other neighbouring small towns like Mortain and Sourdeval, both of which suffered immense damage in a very short space of time.

Aerial view of Saint-Hilaire after the bombing

Saint-Hilaire church today

Our shelves are gradually accumulating a collection of books and pamphlets portraying both the violence and complexity of the conflict and the huge damage it inflicted on people and buildings. To browse the old photos of places we know well and see how much has been lost, and how much painstakingly reconstructed, deepens our affection for an area which seems more like home all the time.

To talk to our French neighbours who experienced the war, or who heard their parents describe their experiences, brings home to us that history in our part of southern Normandy isn’t to be found so much in ancient buildings (though some do survive) as in the memories of those who lived through it all and in what they so laboriously rebuilt from the ruins of their homes and their past history. 

The war may have ended before I was born, but in Normandy there is still a deep awareness and respect for what was endured, both by those who lived here and those who fought, and often died, to liberate them. The echoes of conflict are still very audible to those who listen for them.

Lessons for life

Hamburg in ruins   (Image via Wikipedia)

Sixty-six years ago this weekend, on May 8^th 1945, World War II came to an end in Europe. Twenty years later, as a very young 19 year-old, I was working in Hamburg, scene of some of the most devastating bombing of that war. I was spending six months abroad, first in Germany, then in France, to improve my spoken-language skills before taking up my place at Oxford University to read modern languages.

When I wrote to the employment office in Hamburg to find work, I was offered the choice between working in a department store and finding my own accommodation, or as a nursing orderly in a council care home, with a room provided in the nurses’ hostel. I chose the latter and it was one of the best decisions I ever made. I arrived in early March a shy and rather unworldly girl and left for France in mid-June, having grown up more than I would have thought possible in three months, thanks to the work I had done and the people I had met while doing it.

The first few weeks of work passed in a blur of new surroundings, people, language, and a demanding 47-hour working week, which left me exhausted by the end of my shift at 7pm. Gradually, however, I adjusted to the routine, learned names and faces and started to make sense of the local accent and dialect.

As I did so, personalities began to emerge, first among my colleagues, who were kindness itself to this young foreigner, then among the residents, most of whom were fascinated, and indeed charmed, to have “eine junge Engländerin” (an English girl) changing their beds, dishing up their food, and later feeding, washing and caring for the more incapacitated among them.

Forty-six years on, when I think back to those days, three in particular of those residents still come vividly to mind – their names, their faces and, above all, what I learned from them.

The first I only knew for a very short time, as she died on Good Friday, only a month after my arrival. Her name was Frau Kaakschlief and she was totally paralysed, so that we had to do everything for her. In constant pain from dreadful bed-sores, which nothing seemed to alleviate, helpless and increasingly weak, she still managed to summon up the most beautiful smile and a whispered “Danke” whenever anyone did her the slightest service.

I came on duty that Good Friday morning to find my colleagues in tears. Frau Kaakschlief had died in the night, and though none of us could have wished her back, we missed her dreadfully and I doubt any of us ever forgot her smile, her patient courage and her amazing dignity.

The second was Frau Fliege and I remember her, not for her words, for she could no longer speak, but for the harsh injustice of the illness which had reduced her to this state. She was in the last stages of tertiary syphilis, caught from her soldier husband during or after the war, and undiagnosed until it was too late to avoid the worst this dreadful disease can do. As I sat by the bed to feed this tiny, bird-like figure, or helped to change her and her bedding with monotonous regularity, I learned a great deal about the unfairness of life, but also about the deep humanity of my colleagues, who treated even this shell of a woman with unfailing care and respect. I was growing up very fast.

The third unforgettable resident was totally different. She could definitely speak, and did so with great humour, considerable intelligence and a wide experience and understanding of life and human nature.  Her name was Frau Vagt, but she was known universally as Oma or Granny Vagt.

Oma Vagt was a short, strong, stocky woman, with a broad face and even broader grin, who had worked hard all her life, and though by then over 80, went on working because she wanted to. By the time we day-shift workers came on duty at 7am, Oma would be up and busy in the ward kitchen, sorting out individual coffee pots for everyone’s breakfast. Later she would help with the washing-up and would have helped with the cleaning too, if we had let her.

Every afternoon I had a two-hour break in my twelve-hour shift and quite often would go to Oma’s room (shared with 3 others) and chat with her. She loved company, was a born raconteuse and enjoyed nothing more than an opportunity to reminisce about life in Hamburg before, during and after the war. Finding in me a very willing listener, she was in her element and we spent many happy hours together.

One unforgettable afternoon the conversation turned to the wartime bombing of Hamburg. Back then Oma and her family had run a dairy in a working-class area near the docks, called Rothenburgsort. In late July 1943 the Allies launched a massive bombing raid on Hamburg which culminated in the deadly firestorm that totally destroyed the docks and the surrounding areas, and killed and injured tens of thousands of people.

On that sunny spring day Oma described to me how everyone in her street had had to make a fateful decision that night - whether to shelter in the cellars under their homes or try to escape to surrounding areas which were being less heavily bombed. As she put it to me very starkly “Those who left, lived. Those who stayed, died.”  She and her family made a run for it, as did a few others in her street. When they went back after the fires were finally extinguished, it was to find that their homes, their friends and neighbours, indeed their entire district, had disappeared.

Shocked and horrified, I sat by Oma’s bed and listened to her telling her story quite simply and unselfpityingly, with no note of anger or hatred or reproach in her voice. This was what happens in war, her attitude said, and it didn’t prevent us becoming friends across all the barriers of language and nationality, of age and experience, which could so easily have divided us. This lesson in tolerance and acceptance sank in deeply and has in part moulded the person I now am.

Three elderly women, in a different country and in what is now a different age.  Three women whose names and faces are indelibly engraved on my memory and who between them taught me lessons I still treasure and try to live by, not so much because of what they said or did, as because of who and what they were.

Three unforgettable women....