The passing of the First World War generation was marked by a special memorial service at Westminster Abbey today as millions of people across Britain and Europe observed the two-minute Armistice Day silence.
Ninety-one years after the guns fell silent at 11am on 11th November, 1918, the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh joined Gordon Brown, senior politicians and the heads of the armed forces in the solemn ceremony which commemorated the passing of the final three veterans of the war living in Britain, who all died this year. William Stone died in January, aged 108, followed in July by Henry Allingham, 113, and Harry Patch, 111. The only remaining British-born survivor of the war, former seaman Claude Choules, who is 108 now lives in Australia.
Poppies in the fountains at Trafalgar Square
Few can have been unmoved by the poignant sight at the last commemoration at the Cenotaph in Whitehall, London of these last surviving veterans of the First World War joining serving soldiers in current conflicts to mark the 90th anniversary of the day peace returned to Europe. Then Henry Allingham, Harry Patch and Bill Stone led the nation as it remembered the sacrifices made by the 1914-1918 generation. They each represented the armed service they belonged to - for Mr Allingham the Royal Air Force, Mr Patch the Army and Mr Stone the Royal Navy. All three men laid wreaths at the Cenotaph in central London to commemorate Armistice Day. Sadly, but not too surprisingly, all have now died since that ceremony.
http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/07/farewell-old-soldiers.html
Henry Allingham, Harry Patch and Bill Stone
Being in Westminster and not too far from the Abbey which was the venue for the ceremonies you notice the minutiae of these occasions, the police checking lampposts and sealing manhole covers before hand, the veterans with their medals heading to the ceremony, the Guards colour party in great coats and bearskins marching briskly along the footpath from Wellington Barracks, the ambassador’s cars with their flags going down Toothill Street and the boom of the field in Green Park announcing at 11 the beginning of the silence and two minutes later the boom announcing it ending. Why Gordon Brown’s car passed along Petty France this morning on his way to the Abbey taking a different route from the back of Downing Street to the front of the Abbey. As is the way here these ceremonies are well oiled and practiced with no need for self important motorcades or grandiosity. Wars are and, we sometimes forget, have always been controversial but the orchestrated personal attacks on Gordon Brown by Rupert Murdoch and the tatty Sun “newspaper” represents a new low by the Dirty Digger and his hired help who arrogantly feel they can manipulate the British Public and British Democracy.
Theipval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme
But none of this controversy about current military engagements should in any way to detract from the personal heroism or sacrifice of soldiers in battle and it is right that their bravery is commemorated each year on Armistice Sunday, the service held on the Sunday closest to Armistice Day, the anniversary of the end of the fighting in World War 1 at 11.00 am on the 11th November 1918. Indeed when you read the obituaries of those who served in the wars and the enormous responsibilities and decisions they had to undertake at a tender age you somehow feel that those of us whose lives have not been tempered by war have somehow led shallow lives by contrast. However we largely read about those who survive, not those who perished.
This was brought home to me some years ago when I made a personal journey to the battle fields for there were deaths on both sides of my family in the First World War. My wife’s great uncle Edward Kenny who died with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders in the Battle of the Somme in 1916 and my Great Uncle, James McMahon who died with the Royal Dublin Fusiliers at Beaurevoir in the Ainse 5 weeks before the end of the war in 1918.
Private Edward Kenny
Private Edward Kenny, originally from Edenderry, Co. Offaly had fallen with the 2nd. Bn. Argyle & Sutherland Highlanders, at the Somme on the 27th August 1916 and he’s commemorated alongside 72,088 others at the dramatic “Monument to the Fallen” memorial designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens at Thiepval on the D73 road between Baupaume and Albert. This monument is for soldiers who fell at the Somme who have no known grave or were not identified and his name is inscribed on panel 15C. The entry in "Ireland's Memorial Record" shows he was 24 when he died. To escape from poverty in Ireland they had moved to Bonnybridge near Glasgow and worked in the summer months as “tattie hokers”, the term for agricultural labourer’s who worked on the back breaking potato (tatties in the Scots dialect) harvest for bed and board and low wages. He joined up with the venerable Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders who are based at Scotland’s historic Stirling Castle and is commemorated on the Roll of Honour there and at The Scottish War Memorial at Edinburgh Castle. Disgracefully, to visit the latter you have to pay an expensive admission charge into the tourist theme park which is the modern Edinburgh Castle. We were able to trace his war record from a photo which showed the distinctive hat band of the Argyle and Sutherlands. His brother (my wife’s maternal grandfather) served in the Merchant Navy during the war and survived to live to a ripe old age.
Edward Kenny's War record Card - Transferred to France 13/9/1915 - KIA 27/8/1916
Edward Kenny commemorated in "Ireland's Memorial Record" Click to see a larger image
My great uncle who fell in WW1 was Private James Mc Mahon of the 6th. Bn. Royal Dublin Fusiliers and by coincidence he hailed from Clara, Co. Offaly, the same county as my wife’s great uncle. Unlike my wife’s relative James McMahon has a grave in the Aisne, the Department beyond the Somme whose capital is Cambrai and where the front line had stopped when the hostilities ended with the Armistice at 11 in the morning on the 11th November 1918. James McMahon was killed on the 8th October 1918 at a village called Beaurevoir, one of roundly 90 young Dublin Fusiliers who were killed from the 8th to 11th October and are buried with him in the cemetery. He was killed, aged 20, just over 4 weeks from the end of the war taking part in the so called “March to Victory” which lasted for 100 days until the Armistice. While not obvious today when viewing the sleepy countryside, in 1918 this was the last part of the fortified Hindenburg Line being attacked by tired and inexperienced British Troops resulting in disproportionate casualties amongst the attackers.
James McMahon's grave Beaurevoir, Aisne, France
Like all the Commonwealth cemeteries it is beautifully maintained and lies on the edge of the village with the standard layout of the Cross of Remembrance and a shelter for visitors which also holds the Book of Remembrance. James lies in a row of other Dublin Fusiliers aged from 18 to 21 with his name on the headstone given as “B. J. McMahon”. I wasn’t expecting to feel a great deal of connection with somebody who died so many years before I was born but being there amongst the graves of so many young Irish soldiers who all died on the 8th October 1918 was surprisingly moving.
James McMahon commemorated in "Ireland's Memorial Record"
In our fallen relatives home towns of Edenderry and Clara there are still “British Legion” houses provided for ex-soldiers and their families and in the decades of poverty and economic stagnation many Irish families were quietly grateful for the “War Pensions” they received. Ireland was neutral during the Second World War but many served in the British forces and many also worked in England both to survive and help the war effort including my Grandfather and two uncles who travelled on British Legion travel warrants and worked for the electronics firm Lucas in Birmingham during the war whilst living in a company dormitory. My father at the age of ten and his family on the other hand came in the other direction as refugees from the devastating blitz in Coventry.
On Armistice Day I too am proud to wear a poppy not in support of British Militarism or to legitimise the wanton waste of life in war. Rather I wear it to remember the great sacrifice of Edward Kenny and James McMahon and all their comrades who made a brave personal choice to fight for the greater freedom of humanity and paid the ultimate price for their beliefs.
Gurkha Tul Bahadur Pun VC
I leave the last word to the “Last Tommy” Harry Patch who thought that his comrade’s sacrifice had been in vain because what the world achieved was not “Peace in our Time” but rather it set the scene for the conflict of WW11. He expressed himself movingly and plainly in interviews in 2004;
Harry Patch 1898 - 2009
“I was taken back to England to convalesce. When the war ended, I don't know if I was more relieved that we'd won or that I didn't have to go back. Passchendaele was a disastrous battle — thousands and thousands of young lives were lost. It makes me angry. Earlier this year, I went back to Ypres to shake the hand of Herr Kuentz, Germany's only surviving veteran from the war. It was emotional. He is 107. We've had 87 years to think what war is. To me, it's a licence to go out and murder. Why should the British government call me up and take me out to a battlefield to shoot a man I never knew, whose language I couldn't speak? All those lives lost for a war finished over a table. Now what is the sense in that?"
......."It wasn’t worth it. No war is worth it. No war is worth the loss of a couple of lives let alone thousands. T’isn’t worth it … the First World War, if you boil it down, what was it? Nothing but a family row. That’s what caused it. The Second World War – Hitler wanted to govern Europe, nothing to it. I would have taken the Kaiser, his son, Hitler and the people on his side … and bloody shot them. Out the way and saved millions of lives. T’isn’t worth it."
See also;
http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2007/11/towards-somme-personal-journey.html
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