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Six Days On The Somme 1982
- Part Two
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Harry
Evans' Strong Voice
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One of the features of this tour was of following people’s stories through to a conclusion. We got to know two couples well, Cyril and Gwyn Faulkner from Sheffield and a Welsh couple, Pat and Harry Evans. We soon got involved with Harry and Pat’s quest. They were making a pilgrimage on behalf of Harry’s uncles and others in the Royal Welch Fusiliers. Harry’s interest had started when he came across two regimental cap badges in an Antiques Shop desk. The badges were both fairly rare in Wales (the Royal Irish Rifles* and the Tank Corps), but were the regiments his uncle served in - could these be his uncle’s badges? (*Or possibly King Edward's Horse)
Harry was determined to make a deed of homage at Mametz (the Welsh [38th] Division was all but destroyed in Mametz Wood in its baptism of fire), which we would visit in a couple of days’ time.
At last we accompanied him to Danzig Alley Cemetery (overlooking Mametz), where the memorial to the Royal Welch Fusiliers is. He then sang the Welsh National Anthem, in Welsh, in front of the memorial plaque.
It was such a simple thing but wonderfully moving. His strong voice (are Welsh voices ever otherwise) rang out with its message of comradeship, reverence and solidarity. All eyes misted over.
We then wandered among the graves trying to be alone – for although a sympathetic group adds power to these experiences, the experiences themselves are intensely private.
As I wandered up and down the rows, the epigraphs to all the headstones seemed to stand out in bold relief. Each one was a mother grieving, a sweetheart mourning, a father deprived of his lineage. It was not the words themselves that mattered, but I seemed to sense the emotion that inspired each inscription.
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Afterwards I told Harry that I was very touched by his singing, and it had been one of the high spots for me. He was intensely pleased to have shared his feelings with the group. One day he hoped to organise a proper memorial to the Welsh Division in this area, if he could raise the funds. Looking back over twenty years, it amazed me to find that the striking Welsh Dragon Memorial at Mametz was erected only a few years later, in 1987. This is Harry and Pat's (South Wales) branch of the Western Front Association. See its Mametz Memorial page for some stunning recent pictures of the dragon |
The Welsh Dragon Memorial at Mametz |
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Adventures
With Major Mac
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The second last day had been set aside for ‘Adventure Expeditions’, meaning visits chosen by sub-groups of the party instead of the scheduled programme. There was only one expedition. Besides me it contained another Geoffrey (the chap I was sharing with - a very pleasant fellow), and Major Mac. I can’t recall his full name but he ran a military museum in Glasgow.
Major Mac was very straight-backed and regimental and walked with an exaggerated swing of the arms. He had the most enormous belly and yet wore what appeared to be fitted, made-to-measure trews. He was a mine of military information. Did you know that the British Army walked at exactly 120 paces to the minute, this being the optimal speed when carrying equipment? This meant a mile achieved in 16 minutes and 40 seconds, or 3 miles per hour, including the essential ten-minute rest.
He was however all ‘output’ and no ‘input’ – which meant you couldn’t discuss anything with him. He couldn’t help taking over, even in restaurants. When we stopped for meals, people tended to let him out of the coach first, watch which direction he went, and slip away in the other direction.
Perhaps because the three of us didn’t have a reasoned discussion, we ended up committing to the most ridiculous ‘adventure’: we would walk to Bray-sur-Somme, where we would be picked up in three hours time – but if we missed the rendezvous, we would have to make our own way home to Amiens, perhaps 30 miles away.
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Delville Wood |
The coach stopped at Delville Wood, sacred to the memory of the South African Brigade which had sacrificed so many of its members conquering and holding on to the Wood. The rest of the group were being shown around where the trenches were. For some reason we had eschewed the help of the local guides, possibly because Major Mac had a wonderful collection of WW1 trench maps with him in his Officer’s Map Case and we could get there faster. We spent the next hour going fruitlessly round and round the Wood. Eventually, I found the trenches myself with the aid of a rough one-inch sketch map given in the little brochure. |
We checked our larger scale maps. Bray was 10 miles away and we now had only two hours to get there.
In the first hour we travelled back through the Somme battlefield, just inside the British sector. We passed a wood – Trônes Wood - which someone had asked me to photograph for them, discovered the correct site for the Bricquetrie fought over in 1916, and shook hands with some friendly farm-workers who pointed us on our way.
We refused a vast quantity of what the French call the ‘Iron Harvest’ – battlefield detritus dug up when ploughing – from another farmer who, deducing our field of interest from our clothing, screeched to a halt in his lorry and offered us live shells as we retreated, shaking our heads for all we were worth.
We even found the grave of a VC in Major Mac’s regiment.
Now there was only an hour left and lots of ground to cover. Geoffrey and I had somehow acquired Major Mac’s heavy bag. A decade earlier the Major would have seen us off, but now we began to leave him behind as we increased our pace. We were now travelling down the line marking the junction between the British and French Armies; there were few sights to hold us back as we worked up to a considerable speed.
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We were about half an hour ahead of the Major when we saw the coach at last. Our dishevelled and out-of-breath state must have alarmed the others, for when I announced that “Major Mac didn’t make it”, and Geoffrey held up the Major’s bag suggesting that his remains were inside, no one laughed. “What happened? Where is he?” were the anxious questions. In fact he was sitting on a rock a mile or two down the road, examining his feet for possible blisters, if memory serves me right. |
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The next morning Major Mac admitted to us he had “Left cleaning his shoes until the morning”. He must have been tired!
The day I got home, I found, and bought a book in a second hand bookshop. It was “The History of the 54th Brigade, 1914-18”. This was the Brigade that captured Trônes Wood and the frontispiece was a picture of it, from exactly the same spot as I had taken my picture for the other member of our expedition.
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The
New Zealand Volunteer
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On the last day we made a detour to follow one person’s raison d’être for being on a previous Holts Tour. His story had been tape-recorded and was played back to us.
The narrator spoke in a barely perceptible New Zealand accent. I may not have remembered every detail correctly, but I think this will give you the gist of his story.
He began, “Charles James Edward Moore was a New Zealand volunteer. While training in England he met a conductress on a tram and tried to get to know her. Shy, as many young ladies were then, she refused to go out with him but he kept making that same tram journey in the hope of meeting her and trying again. Eventually she consented to go out with him and they were married a few months later, but much against the wishes of her family, who wanted nothing more to do with her.
“He went to the Front and after a few months received news that his wife was pregnant.
“Shortly afterwards he was killed and the effect of the news on his wife, living alone for the first time, with no one to turn to, was that she became very ill.
“When she had been delivered of a fine bouncing boy she sat up and said, ‘He’s got lovely brown eyes and curly hair like his father’. And then she died. “Ladies and Gentlemen, I have brown eyes and curly hair and my name is Charles James Edward Moore. In five minutes time I’m going to see my father for the first time and I know my mother will be with me when we go into the graveyard.
“This will be the first time all three of us will be together and I’m delighted to share it with you.”
Our narrator’s voice had remained flat and unemotional throughout, quavering just a little in the last sentence.
Our coach drew to a stop and we went into the cemetery. Sergeant Moore’s grave was in the front row.
Next year I will explore another area of the Western Front, but most of all I want to find a story that I can adopt and make my own.
All the best
Geoff
Postscripts
Reaction from my father: “What a series of deep emotions your trip turned out to be! The dawn attack with some of the usual SNAFU was a good touch of realism for which the organisers deserve an Alpha. Obviously it stirred your feelings greatly, which as my friend Ralph was fond of saying, was the object of the exercise.
“The empty stomach and the two tots of rum and the venue played their parts in the realism. The reaction of yours of wanting to be on your own seems to me valid. The other alternative I think would be a group hysteria taking a completely different type of emotional outburst: of high pitched talk perhaps nervous giggles & so on.
“You are just like your mother; she would feel for others too like your reaction to the Welsh singer or the tape recording of the ANZAC.”
And two years later, from two of my colleagues on that tour:
Harry & Pat Evans: “Yes, Geoff, the 1982 Somme Tour was indeed marvellous, wasn’t it? Pat and I thought it the most stimulating holiday we have ever experienced and have enough memories to last a lifetime. Of course it is always the people who make a successful tour like that, and our party just seemed to ‘click’ and that made it for everyone".
Cyril & Gwyn Faulkner: “One of the memorable moments of that marvellous tour was of Harry singing…I remember the time so well when Harry finished singing, no one looked at any one, we all just drifted away, mostly alone. “I don’t suppose there will ever be another tour with such a knowledgeable and friendly crowd.”
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