I wonder how many people who take their children to see the ducks at Holden Pond in Southborough, or go fishing there, stop to read the memorial to Walter Clary. 

Sadly, although I did once encounter Walter, I missed the chance to get to know a truly memorable man.  He had knocked on our door canvassing for the Labour Party. I told him that my husband and I had always voted Labour, but that in the light of Tony Blair having led Britain into the Iraq War by relying on flawed intelligence (and against the wishes of the majority of the British people, including those of us who took to the streets in unprecedented numbers to protest) we came to the conclusion that we could not in all conscience vote Labour in the next election. Walter was quite noticeably distressed at this, and said he too opposed the War, and Tony Blair, but that the body of the party was greater than one man. For some time afterwards, Walter posted copies of the Labour Party newspaper through our letterbox.

I thought of Walter again, recently, when I reflected that a man like him, whose values and principles underpinned a lifetime of service to the many, not the few, and core Labour till the day he died, would surely be a supporter, were he alive today, of Jeremy Corbyn.

Walter was born in North London in 1920, and left school at 14. He cycled 14 miles daily to and from work in the rubber industry at Kingston-upon-Thames. At 16, he wanted to go to Spain to fight with the communist forces opposing Franco's fascists, but was prevented by his mother, who judged him too young. 

During the Second World War he served with the Royal Engineers in the 20th Bomb Disposal Division, and travelled around Kent clearing mines and disposing of unexploded bombs and shells. The work, and the death of many of his comrades left an enduring mark on him. He met his wife Joyce in 1941 when he was stationed in Tunbridge Wells. Walter was awarded a medal for his six years in bomb disposal, having continued this dangerous work for two years after the war. The family moved to a council flat in Islington after demobilisation in 1947, and the lack of affordable housing at the time fostered Walter's belief in the need for social housing. During an interview in 2002 he said "having a decent home is the basis of a good society". He was also a vocal advocate for the National Health Service, having been a witness to its birth.

After moving to Seal, in Kent, and later Southborough, his day job was with Cable and Wireless as a telegraph operator and then with the Department of Health and Social Security, but it was in his spare time that, throughout his long life, Walter dedicated himself to working for the welfare of others, including the following:

• active member of the Labour Party
• Parish Councillor
• PTA, Scouts, Tenants' Association supporter
• Town and Borough Councillor
• Branch Chairman, Secretary and Conference Delegate, British Legion
• active supporter of Age Concern
• Chair of the Pensioners' Association
• Southborough Town Mayor

Walter was respected by members from all parties in local politics, and was renowned for his kindness, social conscience and straightforward opinions. He was well-known for his letter-writing efforts. In 1990 he hit the headlines when his anger at Margaret Thatcher's imposition of the flat-rate Community Charge (aka the Poll Tax) led to an appearance before local magistrates (his first ever!) for refusing to pay. He said "It was a bad law, and caused great hardship to so many people. I had to speak up on their behalf. It would have been easy just to pay, but I felt I had to go and speak up, I couldn't funk it." To further ram home his point in this fight which he could not win, he wore his war medals to underline his loyalty to those things in which he did believe.

In early 2003, Walter wrote to the Queen asking her to halt the attack on Iraq, and Britain "being dragged to war by the USA." He was a staunch republican, and was disappointed by what he saw as the bland reply from the Queen's Chief Correspondent Officer. He vowed to write again to the Queen, saying that he thought the situation "too serious to wash your hands of."

Walter was also deeply concerned with environmental issues, and his daughter Coral recalled that even as a youth, he would take home stray animals. In Southborough he campaigned successfully for the establishment of a local nature reserve, Barnett's Wood, plus a rolling tree-planting programme. Every year in all weathers he would go out to save migrating frogs from being killed on the roads adjoining the grass around Holden Pond, their ancient spring breeding grounds. He was also a keen supporter of the Kent High Weald environmental project. Walter never owned a car, but instead used a bicycle and public transport to get around.

Walter described himself as a Christian Socialist, and held the view that he should help those in need. But he was no holier-than-thou stuffed shirt, clearly. Martin Betts recalls: "Walter loved people and he loved life... he laughed a lot - particularly at his own expense - and had that rare gift of making people feel good about themselves and had an amazing number of friends."  He kept fit by swimming and weight-lifting, and described himself during a BBC interview, when he was identified as the oldest serving Councillor in Kent, as "a recycled teenager ... inside an old bloke is a young bloke trying to get out!"
 
Walter died on 21 December, 2003 following a stroke. On the day of his stroke, he was planning to distribute funds to pensioners for Christmas. 

Sources:
Press clippings collected by Maxwell Macfarlane, President Southborough Society
Obituary by Martin Betts, Southborough Labour Party
Obituary, Kent  Courier, 2 January 2004
Warwick Diary by Jane Bakowski, Kent Courier, 15 March 2013

​Recovering from particularly vicious flu, have been having some bird therapy today! Listening with full attention to bird song tracks while simultaneously looking at picture of each bird in my 1988 edition Book of British Birds (Readers Digest/AA).



If you love birds as much as I do, please see below (courtesy of and thanks to The Observer - I clipped this from their 19 August 2018 issue), here is a damn good reason to buy organic foodstuffs.

​I was born and raised in New York City and graduated from City College of NY with a degree in sociology.  I spent my study-abroad year in Cardiff and did graduate work in sociology at the LSE.  After a decade of teaching sociology in New Zealand, I returned to New York to teach kids with open court cases in the South Bronx and, later, students with learning disabilities.  I’m now working privately with kids who need learning support and writing poetry in my spare time.  The collection of books on my shelves never shrinks because I keep buying new ones and borrowing others from the library. I have a wonderful, creative daughter and a very young and delightful grandson.

​
Strength in Stillness by Bob Roth

When my New York Public Library reserve for this book came through, I had no recollection of how I’d come upon the title.  But I took it home and read this little book in a day.  Bob Roth took up Transcendental Meditation in the 1970’s and has been a practicing teacher of and writer about TM since then. I was so impressed by the clear and convincing account of TM’s benefits and by the scientific research that supports such claims that I did the 4-day TM training last summer and have been meditating since then. If you have even the slightest interest in taking up some form of meditation, I recommend that you read this first.

​Deep Work by Cal Newport

​While most of us simply wonder where all our time goes and why we are not as productive as we’d like to be, Cal Newport has developed a way to maximize his productivity every moment of the day with the end result of greater satisfaction and more time to play with his young children. An assistant professor of computer science at Georgetown University, Newport has devised a method for getting the noise, distractions, and irrelevant efforts out of our lives. The techniques he developed for himself are widely applicable to us all.  Reading the book transforms your view of what really matters in life and how to align your goals with your actions.  I loved it so much that I typed pages of notes from the book before returning it to the library.

​The Child in Time by Ian McEwan

​I remember exactly where I was some 40+ years ago (my boyfriend’s flat, Stamford Hill) when I read Ian McEwan’s first collection of short stories. Since then, he has continued to be one of the few fiction writers whose work I read. I have recommended The Child in Time to countless friends. The opening chapter will send you into a paroxysm of anxiety, but your suffering will pay off. I can’t say much about the plot without spoiling it (unless you have seen the 2018 movie of the book with Benedict Cumberbatch), but it is about time, love, and grief.  And, of course, as it is by Ian McEwan, it is beautifully written.

​Stag’s Leap by Sharon Olds

​I share with my good friend Judith Johnson a love of Sharon Olds’s poetry.  This Pulitzer Prize-winning collection was occasioned by the author’s divorce, and it is in turn raw and elegant. The poems are arranged in a narrative sequence that takes the reader through Olds’s journey from disbelief to anger to grief and, finally, to acceptance and healing. 

​The Giant Jam Sandwich by John Vernon Lord

If you feel that your spirits need lifting after reading my last two recommendations, The Giant Jam Sandwich is the book for you. This is a children’s book that delighted my daughter when she was young, and which I often send to parents-to-be. Even very young children will be intrigued by the complex plot, for it is conveyed with such energy, action, and rhythm (along with delicate illustrations) that it will hold their attention and leave them wide-eyed as you turn from page to page.  If you want to find out how the town of Itching Down deals with an invasion of four million wasps, you’ll just have to read the book yourself.

I don’t eat sugar, so most of the year I don’t eat cake, but  at Christmas time I look forward to making  Christmas cake and puddings with some  excellent (cane) sugar-free recipes. It’s sweet enough with all the fruit, and I get the organic ingredients from  a wonderful  cooperative in Hastings, Trinity Wholefoods.
​
Before the New Year, I like to make one more for the house, and another for my son, daughter-in-law and granddaughters to tuck into on New Year’s Eve. I’ve had a really enjoyable morning mixing these up while listening to Cerys Matthew’s brilliant Sunday morning programme on BBC Radio 6 Music. I love this Twixmas time, when, for those of us who are lucky enough not to be working right through, there’s time for reflection, rest, and respite from the onslaught of life’s busy busy business.

Many of us don’t these days say a religious Grace before eating, but here’s a nice family one from Festivals, Family and Food by Diana Carey and Judy Large:

Earth who gives to us our food
Sun who makes it ripe and good
Dearest Earth and Dearest Sun
Joy and love for all you have done.

If I remember before I leap into eating, I also like to silently thank all those people who have worked hard to grow my food. In this case I’d like to thank those brothers and sisters around the world who produced these ingredients which went into the puddings today:

• raisins from Uzbekistan
• currants from Greece
• sultanas and apricots from Turkey
• prunes and almonds from the USA
• orange and lemon peel from Italy
• pears from Kent
• ginger, cinnamon and mace from the spice-growing nations
• eggs from Britain
• apple and pear juice from the Netherlands
• gluten-free flour from Doves Farm, Berkshire

Lastly, thanks to son Tom, who bakes beautiful loaves of bread, and gives them to us wrapped in greaseproof paper and string. I’ve recycled these to wrap the puddings for five hours’ boiling.
 
PS
Here’s a link to another Johnson Twixmas offering  - it took a lot longer to produce, but equally tasty for bookworms who love a good  creepy tale!

http://www.mj-johnson.com/blog/twixmas-offer-less-than-half-price

When my favourite item in the Waitrose Weekend paper (My Best Books) was chopped to just one book a week from five, I really missed it - I just love to hear what other people rate their cherished reads, so I decided to start my own guest-blog along the same lines. Here is the second, with thanks to Paul Cornish, who writes:

I graduated with an illustration degree and went on to work in a variety of  historical sites, art galleries, museums, art/print companies,  always keeping the love of art and books at my core. I've now been working as a Library Customer Service Officer and Registrar of Births and Deaths for a few years. I love being able to talk ‘books’ with people and encourage others of all ages to read (including my three year old son). Being an avid reader, I'm now surrounded by books of all kinds on a daily basis. Was this career move just so I could get my fix without any effort?! It’s a possibility.
 
My fantastic five are: 

The Beach
by Alex Garland
​
Growing up I used to love being read books, especially at bed time, by my mother but never really enjoyed the idea of reading them myself. It seemed like too much to take on. I didn’t discover how a person could enjoy being completely immersed in a fictional world until I was about 18 years old when I was given Alex Garland's ‘The Beach’. This beautiful yet brutal story seemed to grab my attention and appeal to my young self as I was transitioning into manhood, on the cusp of discovering a solitary freedom and independence in a world that can hold so much possibility yet so many hidden dangers.

Ishmael
by Daniel Quinn
​
After a year living abroad and while returning to England I began to read this on the plane. I continued to read it hungrily once back home. I can honestly say that this book permanently changed my view of the world and culture we live in. After finishing it I remember feeling almost desperate to do something about the selfish and devastating way we're blindly stripping this planet in order to feed our rapidly growing population. Quinn’s powerful message is carried across perfectly on the fictional story of a character who becomes the pupil of... a gorilla. 

A Wizard of Earthsea
by Ursula Le Guin
​
Quite a few books have been recommended or given to me by my oldest friend Tom, but this one ended up being by far my favourite. It’s the first story of the Earthsea Quartet and it follows the first part of Ged's life. A boy with a considerable gift in magic who struggles with himself to become the man he wants to be (or is destined to be). Beautifully composed, I believe Le Guin's writing is inspired by various anthropological and theological studies which allowed me to connect to Ged's character and the world he lives in on a more personal and spiritual level. 

The Ocean at the End of the Lane
by Neil Gaiman

This book was a birthday gift from my wife, and since reading it I have become a huge fan of Gaiman's writing. The main character of this book is a child living in a country village whose family is infiltrated by a character of increasing menace. He also befriends a very unusual little girl. It reminded me of my days walking in country lanes and fields and visiting friends in country cottages. Gaiman's ability to blur and skew the lines of reality in such simple ways had me very quickly falling in love with this story.

War of the Worlds
by H G Wells

In my early 20’s, and never having read any of Wells's work before, I began to read this at a friend’s house and I later bought my own copy. At first I felt unused to the old fashioned language, but after the unearthly events started to unfold I was unable to stop reading. I was stunned at how a man writing this in the 1890’s could even imagine such terrifying and effective alien technologies. He seemed to show how fragile the human race was at a time when the British Empire was seemingly at its proudest. I was and still am truly awed.

It’s no secret I love books. When I worked at a girls’ boarding-school, the librarian would from time to time alert staff that old stock was being deleted, at which point I would beetle down The Long Corridor to the library, heart beating fast with pleasurable anticipation, and stagger back with armfuls of weighty tomes. Food in England, published in 1954, was one such - 662 jam-packed pages of fascinating historical details collected by an eccentric Englishwoman, Dorothy Hartley, who died  aged 92 at the house in Froncysylltau she inherited from her Welsh mother, after a lifetime collecting and recording old customs. She trained as an artist, taught art, worked as a journalist and wrote on social history among other things. In 2012, Lucy Worsley made a film exploring her life-story (see link below).  

Food in England is a treasure-chest of marvellous, personally-researched and idiosyncratically-ordered recipes, old customs, ways of growing food, etc, and I consumed it at the rate of a page or two a night - slow reading, if you like. I’ve usually got a selection of books going at any time - a novel, a non-fiction, a spiritual readings book, and, the last year or so, a vintage Ladybird book - a four-course meal for bookworms! 

​Here’s  a baker's dozen of fascinating tasters from the book which might tempt you to acquire a copy. The beautiful illustrations are by Miss Hartley herself (a fact I was unaware of until I finished the book and researched the author - among my jotted reading notes I find the indignant remark - ‘artist not credited!’).

• The history of white bread, and the pre-Reformation belief in the power of consecrated bread.
• Thumb bread ... the American word "piecing" for a snack taken in the hand, has been preserved since it left England with the Pilgrim Fathers. In Yorkshire they still speak of a "piece poke" for a dinner bag.
• Recipe for 18th century Coconut Bread and for Famine Bread (from Markham, ingredients including Sarrasins corne , or Saracen's Corn).
• Description, from sixteenth century journal, of a sea-voyage when the sailors came upon a fifty year old gibbet, used to hang mutineers, from which their cooper made drinking tankards for those "as would drink in them".

• Description of the Welsh pig: “... this old-fashioned, peaceable, capable, thrifty, neat little porker ... has been kept by every Welsh miner, quarryman, and farmer, for centuries.”
• Ox-rein for Clockmakers - the long testicle cord of the bull ... was hung from a hook with a heay weight to stretch it out. Its strong gut texture was used as pulleys in some sorts of grandfather clocks.
• The famine years of the Middle Ages - ‘To realise how desperate was the famine you must know the seasons as the starving peasants knew them - close and vital knowledge.’
• A recipe for Mediaeval Chewing-Gum (or chewing wax) using beeswax, honey, ginger and cinnamon
• The middle-class Victorian household 1800-1900 section includes mention of brisk exercise before breakfast, which brought to mind the old ladies I met when I was alumni officer at the boarding-school where Enid Blyton's daughters were educated. Girls in the 1920s and 1930s were required to run to the village and back (3 miles!) before breakfast every day.
• The Hafod, or summer farm in early times, common to all mountain countries (now no longer practised in Wales, sadly)
• The old Welsh dog power churn wheel ("It is no hardship, the dogs turn up their job as gladly as their fellows turn up for their job with the sheep").
• The Queen's Cheese recipe (1600), to be made between Michaelmas and Allhallowtide, and a huge cheese, nine feet in circumference, made in 1841 for Queen Victoria from one milking of 737 cows.
• Last but not least, for fellow diehard fans of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey and Maturin novels - the recipe for soup squares, surely Dr Maturin's portable soup!

​I look forward to foraging in second-hand bookshops for her other works - Life & Work of the People of England (6 volumes) sounds right up my street.
 
Link to clips from a BBC film made by Lucy Worsley:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p010fsbq

On a recent visit to Wales to visit friends and family in the Valleys, we spent some time in Brecon including a rainy evening when we took shelter in the Coliseum Cinema and saw the new release Bohemian Rhapsody. Neither of us were massive Queen fans, though I've always enjoyed the old favourites, particularly on drivetime radio, but the film was extremely entertaining, and doubly so because of this cracking little cinema. Opened in 1925, when our mothers were both one-year-olds, it is still going strong at 93 years of age, with its original facade, foyer and interior decor. No chilly, faded flea-pit either, but lovely and warm, with seats brightly re-upholstered in red velvety fabric, clean loos and a welcoming staff - and everything any lover of cinema could wish for, including great sound and vision (I'm fussy about that!) with nice vintage touches like proper cinema tickets that spring out from a metal slot at the pay kiosk, a bijou sweets counter and an usherette in the aisle selling ice-creams from a traditional tray between the adverts/trailers and the start of the main feature.
​
There are two screens, and the cinema also hosts the Brecon Film Society, whose 2018-2019 season includes a selection of 'the best new releases and classic movies from British and World Cinema' - usually shown on the first Monday of each month. At £35 a year (£30 concessions) it's great value, with non-members welcome at £6 a film.

I've blogged elsewhere about the wonderful Cinema Museum in London and other loved cinemas. Most of the great Valleys cinemas have long gone, and apparently the multiplex at Merthyr Tydfil has lured some locals away with its offer of £5 a pop and a two-for-one eatery next door, but that's a 36 mile round trip, and if I lived in Brecon I'd definitely support this beautiful old cinema, whose demise would be a sad loss to the community.

coliseumbrecon.co.uk/brecon/now/

Sara trained at CSSD and was an actor for many years before changing career in her fifties to become a lecturer in Early Years and education. She currently works for Beanstalk, a children’s reading charity, training volunteers to turn children who struggle with reading into passionate bookworms.

Here are her fantastic five:
​ 

​Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfield
​
I paid 3d for this at the village fete when I was 7. I have read it dozens of times. Who did I want to be? It was either Posy, because she danced so brilliantly, or Pauline because she was beautiful and got to do theatre and eventually the movies. Nowadays I fully appreciate the efforts Narnie made to hold the family together, but I don’t want to be her. Maybe I could be Petrova and fly planes; maybe I should read it again and find out.

​Excellent Women by Barbara Pym
​
This was the first of her novels that I read, tempted by the statement that she was “underrated” and “neglected”. She works on a very small canvas: mid C20 Middle England, academia, the church, awkward romances. It’s a safe, Pinewood Studios world, but not without depth and wit. I have laughed out loud at some moments and characters.

​Appetite by Nigel Slater
​
I had an occasional email correspondence with Nigel Slater before he got swallowed up by Twitter. I once told him that I read this book of his from cover to cover, as though it was a novel, and he was delighted. It is almost twenty years old now, and he will admit that food tastes and fashions move on, but he consistently reeks of warmth and pleasure and variety. Keeping Smarties in the basic store cupboard is just one of his strokes of genius.

​Miss Hargreaves by Frank Baker
​
A dear friend sent me this. It is bizarre, surreal and enchanting. The protagonists set up a situation for a joke and then tie themselves in knots trying to justify and then reverse it. The suspension of disbelief is key here. I believe in Miss Hargreaves, but like Norman and Henry, I don’t have any rationale. Enormous fun.

The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald

I loved this book so much when I first read it that I saved reading it again for a time when I could pay it fullest attention. It is very romantic, so brilliantly evocative and so clean and spare in style. I send copies to people all the time, sharing the joy.

Having read quite widely on the First World War, I found much to reflect on in Svetlana Palmer and Sarah Wallis's collection of extracts from diaries and letters, written by those on opposing sides of the conflict, and accompanied by a useful connecting narrative from its authors. It makes for deeply moving reading, and shows,  if anyone ever doubted it, what an appalling waste of life and resources war is, and that regardless of who is blamed for the initiation of war, opposing military combatants, civilians, creatures and the earth itself suffer equally. 

One of the many insights offered by these personal writings are the preconceptions of The Other - and how they affect the writer's thinking and actions.

Vasily Mishnin, on the Russian front line sector of the Eastern Front north of Warsaw, writes in January 1915: 

The Germans are putting their trench in order, and we can see them taking their mess tins to fetch water... This is our enemy? They look like good, normal people, they all want to live and yet here we are, gathered together to take each other's lives away.

German officer Ernst Nopper, stationed in Poland in 1915, writes of a Polish fortress town that has fallen to the German advance against Russian troops:

Inside the fort I was particularly surprised by how clean the barracks are, everything is scrubbed and bleached ... we are wrong to accuse the Russians of being sloppy and untidy all the time. In one of the areas abandoned we found several paintings wrapped in newspaper. I was very surprised to find they were of a rather high quality. We should really ask ourselves why we think so little of the Russians. But it is true that culture hasn't really got through to the ordinary people here, unlike in Germany.

His next entries go on to illustrate, in addition to seeing the Slavic peoples as somehow lower in worth than Germans, the deeply anti-Semitic views which were widely held in Germany and which were to contribute to the rise of Nazism just a few short years later.

French officer Paul Tuffrau fights in the Battle of Verdun, which I recall learning at school in the 1960s, 'bled France white' - the campaign, which, like the Somme, was designed to draw German forces into two large divided fronts. On 25 December 1916, by which time the battle has been going on for 300 days, with 352,800 German casualties, and 348,300 French, he writes:

At 6pm I leave in the dark and the rain to visit the A-33 trench area, which cannot be reached in daytime. Beaudoin, the officer commanding, tells me that around three o'clock the Fritz, 250 or 300 metres away, sang them Christmas carols in French, beautifully.

And in February, after two weeks on leave:

... the men's faces are contorted by the cold and exhaustion. Red-rimmed eyes, red noses, pale skin, blue ears, beards hung with icicles. Sweat freezes right away and looks like snow on the horses' backs and on the men's overcoats. Our shoes cannot grip on the frozen earth as we march.

Many confided their innermost thoughts to their diaries, which they took care to keep hidden, for obvious reasons.

Paul Tuffrau records a conversation with General Mangin, second in command at Verdun, when the former attempts, unsuccessfully, to secure leave for his men, who unlike the British, are only allowed one day of rest after each 24 days on the front line:

Then, with a brief salute, he went back into his well-heated private office where it's easy to avoid the reality and talk of the greater good. As for me, I was stunned by his extraordinary refusal to acknowledge the courage of the men ... That night, after hearing this 'heroic' pep-talk, I led my men along the tracks that were horribly muddy and slippery. Some of them were crying with exhaustion and rage.

Turkish officer Mehmed Fasih is stationed at Gallipoli, and writes, in November 1915:

A great chasm exists between the fellows who do all the fighting and those who merely talk about heroism and victory ... what a tragedy it will be if all men who are still fighting here have to die like their predecessors.  Just so that a handful of cowards can enjoy a taste of fame.

At 21 years of age, he writes that his hair and beard have grown grey already, and that his moustache is white.

The chapter In The Bush shows how the war extended, among other places, to Africa, where there was a renewed scramble by the European powers with already established colonies for territorial gains, and  subsequent huge damage to the people of the African nations caught up in the conflict. African porters and labourers were used by both sides, and an estimated 100,000 to 120,000 employed by the Germans and as many as 250,000 recruits on the British side perished from malnutrition, disease and accidents. A further 300,000 native East Africans died as a result of famine caused by war recruitment and requisitioning.  German settler Dr Ludwig Deppe, who provided medical support to the German forces, wrote, a year after the end of the war:

Behind us we have left destroyed fields, ransacked magazines, and, for the immediate future, starvation. We were no longer the agents of culture; our track was marked by death, plundering and evacuated villages.

The chapter on The War at Sea contains an account by Johannes Spiess, Watch Officer on U-boat U-9, of his, and the submarine's, first patrol mission in the North Sea, six weeks into the war, and the jubilation of the crew when they sunk three British light cruisers, two of which, HMS Cressy and Hogue, had gone to the rescue of the first, HMS Aboukir. Although I'm sure a British crew would have done more or less the same, (though earlier Royal Navy officers, and I'm referencing Patrick O'Brian's fictional Captain Jack Aubrey, would surely have regarded it as deeply unethical to attack a ship without any warning, from a hidden position) I found it quite shocking to read this, as the Chief Yeoman of Signals on the Aboukir, Alfred Assiter, is named on our local War Memorial, and less than a month later, the U-9 would sink HMS Hawke, on which two more men from my town perished. As a non-combatant, and one who, unlike my older relatives, has been fortunate enough not to have lived through a war, it is naturally in those moments when I make a personal connection that I feel the horror of war most keenly. I understand that there has been a big reaction to Peter Jackson's We Will Remember Them among young people, who have suddenly seen the soldiers as resembling those living now rather than flickering distant black and white history. 

Particularly moving are the diaries featured of two children - Yves Congar from Sedan, a town in north-eastern France, and Piete Kuhr from the East Prussian town of Schneidemuhl.

Yves' father is one of a number of men taken hostage to ensure the compliance of the town's population, and sent to Germany to work. Yves himself narrowly escapes detention, at 14, after having being reported calling the occupying Germans the 'Boche'.

Piete, initially patriotic, becomes disillusioned as time goes by, and writes, in February 1918:

I don't want any more soldiers to die. Millions are dead - and for what? For whose benefit? We must just make sure that there is never another war in the future. We must never again fall for the nonsense peddled by the older generation.

So, just a few extracts picked out from a superb anthology which I can highly recommend to those readers who, like myself, are not so much students of military history, but of humanity in times of war.

A large number of events have been organised, in a spirit of thanksgiving for those who gave their lives in World War One.

The Guardian, 12 August 2018, wrote:

In the early morning of 11 November more than 3,000 bell towers across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will ring out with the sound of “half-muffled” bells, like a slow march, in solemn memory of those who lost their lives.

Then, at midday, bellringers at each tower across the UK will remove the muffles from the clappers and at about 12.30 they will ring open. “The national mood swings then to gratitude and gratefulness and thanks,” says Christopher O’Mahony, president of the Central Council of Church Bell Ringers.

Before 1914 the vast majority of bellringers in the UK were male, but the loss of so many men to war meant many more women took up the role. Today there are between 30,000 and 35,000 men and women bellringers in the UK, and still more are being sought for Armistice Day. The aim is that bells sound not just in the UK but across the world.

The British and German governments are encouraging other countries to ring bells at the same times in the same way, expressing the reconciliation of former enemies in sound. “Bells will ring out across the world to replicate the outpouring of relief that took place in 1918, and to mark the peace and friendship that we now enjoy between nations,” says the culture secretary, Jeremy Wright.

I love the sound of church bells ringing, and I am sure that all the bell-ringers taking part have spent many hours of dedicated hard work in preparing for what has been billed as a celebration, one hundred years on, of the first Armistice Day, when peace was declared at the end of a most terrible war.
 
"A passing-bell, for those who died as cattle" - in the words of Wilfred Owen's Anthem for Doomed Youth.

However , I have very mixed feelings about this. I spent seven years, in my spare time, researching a book on those named on my local war memorial, not to glorify, in a nationalistic way, the wars in which they died, but to record their suffering and their loss to their community. I believe I might have done the same, had I settled in Germany, for the local war memorial where I lived. My understanding, strengthened by accounts I've read of wars of all kinds, is that soldiers and civilians suffer on all sides, regardless of who it is judged initiated hostilities. I am currently reading the excellent A War in Words: The First World War in Diaries and Letters by Svetlana Palmer and Sarah Wallis, in which the authors note that little over a month after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, five empires were at war and millions of soldiers were mobilised, all the nations involved convinced they were fighting a defensive war, forced upon them by someone else.

With the current toxic climate in Britain, I expect plenty of flag-flying and jingoistic drum-banging by right-wing nationalistic elements, along the lines of 'our boys died for our country, and now it's being taken over by _____ (insert perjorative xenophobic term)'.  It would be as well to remember that Britain and her allies called on the men of their colonies and dominions to join the fight, and that many did so and lost their lives - these included men of the Caribbean (the fathers of the Windrush generation who we have seen treated so disgracefully in recent times), Africans, Indians (including Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs), Australians, New Zealanders and Canadians. The Neuve-Chapelle Memorial  in the Pas de Calais, for example, commemorates more than 4,700 Indian soldiers and labourers who lost their lives on the Western Front during the First World War and have no known grave.  Chinese labour corps were brought in to clear away the debris of that war, including thousands of abandoned and decaying corpses.

Harry Patch said: "War is organised murder, and nothing else." Can we in all honesty and decency celebrate the end, 100 years ago, of one war, when so much of humanity is still undergoing appalling atrocities world-wide, in some cases being killed with weapons manufactured in Britain and being sold for profit, disregarding any other principle? The In Flanders Field Museum in Ypres has a banner hanging over its exit gate listing the wars fought throughout the world since 1918. I'm sure it's grown considerably longer since the first time I visited.

Lastly, I suspect our current Tory government, whom I regard as being very much part of our current toxic social and political climate, will be playing the 100th Armistice for all it's worth, as an opportunity to parade their ideology and views on British values. Will this include a commitment to improving conditions for those ex-servicemen and women who now live by begging on our streets (an echo perhaps of the thousands of ex-soldier tramps of the 1920s), suffering from PTSD, and refused universal credit?  Will the government continue with their verbal attacks on EU leaders, portraying them as the enemy of British interests in the Brexit negotiations, often adopting scandalously insulting language from WW2 for a cheap soundbite in the Mail, Sun or Express, and generally directed at our German friends? Will they give due credit to the contribution the European project has made in bringing peace to Western Europe since 1945 - where for so many centuries the blood of fallen soldiers in ongoing conflicts has fertilised  its land? Will they work harder to solve the issue of the internal borders on the island of Ireland, where peace accords, fought so hard for, are in danger of collapsing? 

I honour with reverence and gratitude the men and women who suffered and died in World War One, and I also have great respect for all the thousands of volunteers up and down the country who have been busy organising events for this one hundredth armistice, however, I for one don't want to see Theresa May's or any of her cabinet's long faces at the Cenotaph on 11 November.

LINKS: 

Harry Patch on the War:
http://noglory.org/index.php/multimedia/video/540-harry-patch-and-the-pointless-mass-murder-of-the-first-world-war

Homeless ex-servicemen
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/least-13000-hero-soldiers-left-11847000

Former servicemen pensions:
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/up-300000-brave-former-servicemen-13488569

​2018 Armistice Day events:
https://armistice100.org.uk/events/