Fallen Comrades
‘Two pints of bitter and a draught Guinness.’ I really needed a drink, I was choked with emotion. It happened every year, the same gutwrenching feeling, the same sad thoughts that lay too deep for words. It was 1984, two years after the Falklands. As usual, I’d gone home to spend the morning with the people I respected most in my life: my father, a veteran of Dunkirk, Burma, Italy, France and Germany, now in his seventies, a man of traditional tastes and pleasures, passing his days content to look after his canaries and take his evening tot of whisky – ‘Good for the heart, thins the blood’ – a man who said little but missed nothing, a man of wisdom, simplicity and quiet dignity; and Archy, Boy Bugler, naval rating, submariner, holder of the Croix de Guerre – the French VC – a man of great tenderness, relentless good humour and single-minded bravery.
Armistice Day. At this hour on this day a great tidal wave of melancholy and heavy emotion sweeps the land. The same ceremony takes place at the same time in every town throughout the nation, and has done so year after year. As I stood facing the Cenotaph, I experienced a powerful sense of history, a deep continuity of tradition. I felt part of a process going back to Agincourt, to 1066 and beyond. I was aware of a sense of duty to safeguard the nation, to safeguard my friends, my family, my son. In performing that duty, I had found a fulfilling role in life. Some people are still searching for a role, an identity, when they are forty or fifty. When you join the Army you gain an instant identity. The three of us wore our medals with pride.
The sun was just breaking through the clouds, but a chill wind was blowing. At measured intervals, a tannoy announced each of the veterans’ organizations and a representative came forward with a wreath.
‘Submariners and Old Comrades Association.’
The sombre silence between each announcement was broken only by the persistent cough of a young child somewhere at the back of the crowd.
‘Royal Air Force Association.’
As each wreath was laid on the Cenotaph, one by one the bearers stepped back, paused very stiffly for a few moments, saluted sharply, turned on their heels and, belying their years, marched briskly away. One of the oldest wore the thick dark glasses of the blind and had to be guided by one of his comrades, but he was none the less precise in his movements.
As the time approached eleven, the band struck up, slightly out of time for the first few bars but quickly falling into line:
As the last bars played out, the officiating priest came in too early, with ‘Let us remember…’ The band played a ragged ‘Amen’ and the priest began, slightly flustered, then quickly regaining his composure, began again.
‘Let us remember before Almighty God and commend to his keeping those who have died for their country in war…’
A baby started crying as, on the stroke of eleven, the standards dipped. A plaintive Last Post was sounded, one of the most forlorn and evocative of all sounds. Standing beside me, Archy listened intently. The priest continued:
Two minutes’ silence followed, and I remembered them: Laba, Tommy, Taff, Paddy, Sid, Phil and the rest who had perished. Reveille sounded and the standards rose again. I shifted my feet slightly to position the flags between myself and the winter sun to get some relief from the low-lying orb, now shining blindingly in my eyes.
‘The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with us all, evermore.’
As the service drew to a close, people emerged from the crowd in ones and twos and gently laid single red poppies alongside the wreaths, symbols of their own private sorrows, grief-laden tokens for a brother, a father, a son, a husband.
‘Eyes… left! Eyes… front!’
The band and procession of veterans marched off past the Cenotaph, the trombones momentarily seeming to blow stronger, and away down the road. The music faded along with the memories until the only sound was the regular thump of the bass drum, a distant echo of the big guns pounding Fox Bay on the night of the linear ambush.
I drove back to Hereford in a cheerless mood. When I arrived, I felt strongly impelled towards a church a short distance down the road from camp. I hadn’t been there for a long while. Why I should feel particularly drawn there this Armistice Day I didn’t know. Maybe all nostalgia was growing stronger with the passing of the years. All I knew was that I wanted to visit some old friends.
St Martin’s – the final RV, the last basha for the lads who didn’t make it. The graveyard was to the rear of the church, enveloped in peace and tranquillity, away from the traffic grinding up the road from the city centre. It was staked out with six sturdy yew trees. Between the trees I could clearly see the square tower of Hereford Cathedral about a mile away. An air of late-autumn decay pervaded the atmosphere: flowers wilting and faded; fetid water greening in vases; urns weatherworn and chipped; a gathered pile of leaves mouldering in the corner. A helicopter clattered overhead, returning to camp, its young occupants, full of life, vigour and vitality, completely unaware of the disconsolate scene below.
I went over to Tommy and Laba. They lay in adjacent rows beneath the trees and outside the Regimental plot. They had died before this area was set aside. They had only each other for company. I stood at the foot of Laba’s grave. The mound seemed far too short. I wondered how such a small plot could possibly contain such a colossus of a man. A neat winged dagger was carved into the top of his headstone, and below it the inscription:
19 July 1972! The battle of Mirbat. It seemed like another lifetime. And yet, I could see Laba again, as clearly as the cathedral tower. The soundless scenes flitted through my mind. Operation Jaguar: a mortar aiming post under his arm, taking the young Firqats on a mock drill parade to roars of applause from the onlookers; appearing over the rise after the death march, 500 rounds of GPMG link wrapped around his shoulders, two precious jerrycans of water splashing in his hands. The siege of Mirbat: sweat pouring off him, feeding the twenty-five-pounder for all he was worth, the enemy just yards away. Then the bullet cut him down and he breathed his last. I read the words at the base of the headstone with a mixture of pride, gratitude and sadness:
There must have been two or three hundred civilian graves in the main cemetery, but I hardly noticed them as I walked across to the Regimental plot, twenty yards to one side and semi-enclosed by a low wall. A neat line of white headstones stretched down the centre of the plot – a linear ambush of graves! Walking down the line I was suddenly overcome by a deep sense of awe that I had been spared where so many had fallen. Death roams eagerly during battles. A split second, a microsecond, that’s all it takes to die in combat, that’s all it takes to blast the spirit from the body, to destroy years of loving work building family, friends and future.
The line of headstones was so straight, so disciplined, it was as if the men were still on parade, backs rigid, eyes front, forever waiting to be dismissed. An equally ordered row of urns stretched out in front of the headstones, each engraved with a single name: ‘Tony’, ‘Steve’, ‘Frank’, ‘Dave’, ‘Ginge’. The effect was powerful, they were so heartrendingly simple. I sensed an aura of grief, of shock, immediate, still beating. There was some essence of the men that was still alive, still whispering through the trees. A spirit of restlessness, of startled disorientation roamed around the headstones. I glanced across at the civilian graves. Over there was a sense of peace. Those people had lived their lives, they’d run their course, they’d seen out their allotted span of winters and summers. Around the linear ambush lives had been too abruptly snatched away, souls too suddenly ripped from wounded bodies. The psychic shockwaves still lingered, still rippled through the air.