'There's No Silver Lining' is the title of the parody in my 2014 book, Aftermath (see Books), on Lena Guilbert Ford's 1914 poem 'Keep The Home Fires Burning' set to music by Ivor Novello. 'When the boys come home' This weekend we went round a WWI ambulance train on display at the National Railway Museum, York. Millions of sick and wounded soldiers invalided out of putrid trenches were taken to destinations around Great Britain for many of whom there would be - as in the final lines of the parody: '... no silver lining through our dark clouds shining: penniless, limbless, shell-shocked, blind we are now back home.' My uncle, pictured above in the dress uniform of the Seaforth Highlanders, got home unscathed from the Western front with a Military Medal (blog post 4 April). A gravely injured Punjabi in an ambulance train knew he would never see his home again. Words fail me.
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In 1916, almost ninety years before the Animals in War monument was erected on Park Lane, London this World War I soldier was awarded the Military Medal for bravery during the Battle of the Somme. Under heavy shell fire, he managed to reach the barn and unlock the door for the terrified horses inside 'to obey their instincts and flee'. His is one of three Military Medal awards on which the poem 'Polished and Proud' in my book Aftermath is based. 'A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast' - Proverbs 12, 13 This family photo is of a retriever (I think it was) nursing an orphan kitten. And examples of the opposite: cats nursing orphaned puppies aren't too difficult to find. But none are so amazing as the cat who reared three ducklings along with her three kittens. They'd hatched in a barn when the kittens had just been born so, instead of eating them for breakfast, she raised them to adulthood when they continued to follow her around the farmyard. Follow this link for science broadcaster Liz Bonnin's exposition of the science behind the story: www.youtube.com/watch?v=K83BKNxgg7w City sippers, Robert Thompson's article in the Spring 2005 issue of the RSPCA magazine Insidenews is on the late nineteenth century water troughs in and around the city of York for animals from small dogs to horses and cattle. They were installed after free drinking water fountains for human use had reduced cholera epidemics in cities. I came across the article in my animal stories file while I was trying, without success, to find a cutting about the postmistress's cat who saw off a gunman (see 11 May blog). 'A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast...' I'd had no idea of the origin of this quotation inscribed on the back of one of the troughs in City sippers dedicated to Henry Richardson, co-founder of the RSPCA's York Branch in 1864. I must have looked it up at the time because I'd noted on the cutting that it is from Proverbs 12, 13, a thousand years before Christ, in the King James version of the Bible. Here is the verse in full:
'A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast: but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.' Explanatory note Cat (one of four we have had over the years), who had made himself comfortable on the back of an uncomfortably seated young visitor, was annoyed i.e.glared then went out in a huff when he was required to move. 'The cat who walks by himself' (One of Kipling's Just So Stories). Conversations about either dogs or cats veer at times onto comparisons between them which are apt be unfavourable to cats, describing them as self-centred and unsociable. I'd always viewed them as self-contained with a need for some company and assumed the difference in sociability between dogs and cats was that cats, unlike dogs, are by nature solitary hunters. Beware of the cat? You might believe that cats are too self-centred to bother themselves with defending their owners but I'd always felt that cats pick up human emotions as well as dogs. I wish I'd kept the newspaper cutting from years ago of an elderly postmistress held up at gunpoint by a man who was sent packing by her cat which leapt up from the floor and sank its claws into his face. Instead here is the link to Californian news report of a cat which drove off a dog which had bitten its owners' four-year-old boy after knocking him off his bike:
www.animalwised.com/can-cats-protect-their-owners-2645.html And, in the letters section of SAGA magazine December 2000, a reader, V A Henderson, wrote of her cat placing gifts on her seriously ill daughter's bed of flower heads from the garden which it had broken off for her. Caring, compassionate cats. RIP Villain, the police dog in our family I have just tidied up the chapter on the modern working dog's heritage (see 26 April blog). It goes back through the millennia to the first wolf-dogs who bonded with early humans, sadly not always to their mutual advantage. CAVE CANEM BEWARE OF THE DOG Yesterday Paul took a photo of this tile which has hung on our kitchen wall since we bought it in 1978 on a visit to Pompeii and Vesuvius. Chained guard dogs like poor Fido (Faithful) here would have had no chance of fleeing from a pyroclastic flow despite having sensed preliminary earth tremors beforehand. Paul took this photo of this tile on a gate post in Taormina, Sicily in 2016 when we would watch Mount Etna performing from our hotel window as it grew dark. It erupted soon after we had returned home. We thought it was a replica of our tile above but they aren't even as similar as 'Spot the differences' pictures. I can't remember seeing such notices on the Pompeian buildings but I was more interested then in collecting Beware of the dog notices in different languages. I gave up after getting to seven, including Cantonese and Hebrew. REST IN PEACE, FAITHFUL DOGS
3rd Battle of Ypres, World War I No dignified committal for him, the undertaker his coffin Flanders mud... His mourners far away with no focus for their grief... Ten years on stark honour comes... His name is chiselled on the Menin Gate. - Lines from the poem Reveille in Jenny Martin's 2014 book Aftermath Richard Eaves, a joiner and undertaker, reported missing on 31st July 1917, the first day of the battle, was also the inspiration for the poem Last Post (see Poems). He left a wife and two infant children. His name (second column) is one of over fify-four thousand on the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing. Exercise Tiger, World War II When Paul took this photo on our visit in 2000 to the beaches (In Our Fathers' Footsteps),we learned that it was one of four memorials to the missing in the Normandy landings.
What we'd heard nothing of was the loss off Slapton sands, Devon of over six hundred US soldiers in Exercise Tiger, a rehearsal for D-Day. Their landing crafts were torpedoed at 2 am on 28th April 1944. They had not been warned of E-boats in the area, caused by human error, and survivors were threatened with court martial if they ever spoke of it. For decades, families of the missing had no focus for their grief until the truth came out - literally - thanks to a determined local hotelier, the late Ken Small. He paid the US government 50 dollars for a Sherman tank on the sea bed 60 feet down, and in 1984 managed to get it raised and placed on the shore as a memorial to the fallen and as a focus for their faraway families' grief. One of the missing was 19-year-old Sergeant Louis Bolton, whose job after D-Day would have been to bury his fallen comrades' bodies. For him, their undertaker, no dignified committal, but stark honour came to them all when a memorial plaque was placed on the Sherman tank. 'We will remember them' Sources Patrick Kidd, Rehearsal that was deadlier than D-Day. The Times, Monday, April 29 2019; Dean Small's website run in conjunction with the families: www.exercisetigermemorial.co.uk/ken-small This is the working title of my next book about my cousin's late award winning police dog, Villain, which I have been writing on and off for far too long. Heavy persuasion from writing group leader, Nik, made me drop the lack of time excuse and just write something to get going again. Service not self 'Beauty without vanity, strength without insolence, courage without ferocity, and all the virtues of man without his vices.' This quote which begins the book is from John Hobhouse's 1808 epitaph to Boatswain, Lord Byron's dog, surely one of the best canine epitaphs ever, especially for a working dog. You sense from Villain's bearing and alert eyes, kept on Graham, his handler, his eagerness to be off on the next job and abandon the obligatory courtesies to even this dog-loving relative. 'O still small voice of calm' is the final line of a hymn which I first heard about sixty years ago at the funeral of our physics master, a Congregationalist. It begins: 'Dear Lord and Father of mankind/Forgive our foolish ways' and continues with six verses of pleading to 'Break through the earthquake, wind and fire' to show mankind how to lead lives of peace and service. 'The Brewing of Soma' Only days ago I was surprised to learn that W. Garret Horder had used the last six verses of Quaker John Greenleaf Whittier's lengthy poem for his 1884 Congregational hymn. The poem exposes the dangerous futility of anyone trying, by means such as alcohol, drugs, trances, orgies, etc, etc to achieve a 'higher' state of mind in which to hear the still, small voice: www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3620986/Sacred-mysteries.html What is Soma? I have just spent too long on trying and failing to identify the active ingredient in the ancient plant-based Soma brew as, say, tetrahydro-dintitro-benzyl-something-or-other. Prosaic explanation: they don't seem to know, that's why. But I did find something else interesting. The prophet Elijah (9th Century BC) Only days ago I was amazed to find that, at a troubled point in his reign when he had developed suicidal ideation, he heard a 'still, small voice' after 'earthquake, wind and fire' and he could then think and plan clearly (I Kings 19, 11-13). The passage has its basis, not in trying to find religion through ecstasy but through reason and morality based on monotheism (www.britannica.com/biography/Elijah-Hebrew-prophet). 'Speak through the earthquake, wind and fire
O still, small voice of calm.' Orkney Chapel of Peace and Reconciliation On its 70th anniversary, May 2014, Pope Francis gave his blessing and a wish "that this chapel, built in time of war, may continue to be a sign of peace and reconciliation". Days later a door was kicked in by vandals. Months later three Stations of the Cross plaques were stolen. They have since been replaced by exact replicas with sophisticated security monitoring. (Maev Kennedy, The Guardian, 18 Aug 2014; Maggie Parham, Independent, 13 May 1999) White Easter flower The one remaining flower in bloom in this clump in our garden, the others having shed their petals for this year and begun to form seeds. I remember watching the film Chocolat, based on Joanne Harris's book of that name, on an overnight coach returning from a holiday in France. The priest began his Easter Day sermon with these words (as I remember them):
'I speak to you today, not of Christ's divinity, but of his humanity.' Jewish medical physicist, Josef Rotblat, whose wife, Tola, died in a concentration camp, ended his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech years later with these words: 'Above all, remember your humanity.' Domenica Chiochetti painted The Madonna and Child fresco behind the chapel altar from a postcard his mother gave him to take to the war. It was of Barabino's Madonna of the Olives, the infant Christ offering an olive branch of peace to his mother. (Maggie Parham's obituary of Chiochetti in the Independent, 13 May 1999: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obituary-domenico-chiocchetti-1093227.html - accessed today) Soldiers took postcards, teddy bears, all sorts of personal icons into the carnage of war - precious links to their mother, family, home and humanity. But there is no greater love than that of a soldier for his comrade. A WWII soldier got reluctant permission from his officer to go back to his comrade who'd been shot. As soon as he arrived, his comrade said: 'I knew you'd come,' and died. Today's photo is of a red Pulsatilla vulgaris 'Rubra', a cultivar, in our garden. It is now dying down so the redness is less rich.
After going home to Italy, Domenico Chiochetti spent some years carving all 14 Stations of the Cross on mahogany plaques to hang on the chapel walls. Four of them are visible, not in detail, on our 2009 photo of the interior on yesterday's post. In 2014 three of the plaques were stolen, a loss described by John Muir, secretary of local group who care for the chapel, as 'devastating' (Maev Kennedy, The Guardian, 18 August 2014). Much other damage, vandalism, theft and sheer weight of numbers, has been caused by the many visitors to the chapel. Paul's photo taken today, Good Friday, of purple Pasque (Easter) flowers in our garden bought from a nursery. It is hard to believe that such richly coloured flowers are native to the UK and mainland Europe growing on chalky grassland. It is sad that their survival today is in only five undisclosed UK locations, due to vandalism, theft and carelessness. This snapshot showing the entrance to the Italianate Chapel made from 2 Nissen huts was taken in squally weather on our Orkney Islands holiday in autumn 2009. Begun in 1943, it was built by Italian prisoners of war brought into a camp to build eastern barriers to attacks on naval vessels in Scapa Flow. Led by artist, Domenico Chiochetti, the interior is a tribute to the Italians' artistry, craftsmanship and ingenuity. It is reminiscent, though on a grander scale, of the trench art of WWI. They used a huge range of scrap material on the islands much of it donated by the islanders, transcending the barriers of creed and nationality and forging friendships with the islanders that would last throughout their lives. Paul remembers an Italian POW on a nearby farm making him a wooden whistle which sadly didn't survive his Northumbrian childhood. The snapshot of the interior was taken by Paul. I am not the person standing in the sanctuary.
The photo taken this morning shows part of a thriving clump of white wood anemones, Anemone nemorosa, which grow in native woodland. A few years ago, I planted them in a shady part of our garden along with various ferns, there is one on the left, some of which were first found in the Lake District, to remind me of home. This photo shows a few coloured cultivars, mauve and blue, while a couple of clumps of common primrose (top centre), which probably morphed from garden primulas, arrived unbidden and were made very welcome. A garden is a war zone? It doesn't have to be. An attractive but thuggish plant had been threatening to rampage over their quiet beauty, and I had to get husband Paul, the gardener, to deal with it whilst muttering something about 'letting things get out of hand'. My tip for fellow non-gardeners: watch out for anything whose label states 'good ground cover even in dry shade'. But if you really like it, keep a close eye on it, maybe keep it there in a pot, then war won't break out.
93-year-old Len Johnson, Legion President until very recently, was among thirteen winners of civic awards for services to Macclesfield presented by the Mayor of Macclesfield, Adam Schofield (www.cheshire-live.co.uk/news/chester-cheshire-news/macclesfield-civic-awards-honour-those-16114853 ) I was honoured to be invited to the ceremony and see Len receive this award for his 25 years of Service Not Self to those in need of the Legion's help (see my post of 28 March). The Poppy Appeal About half the funds come in during the 2 -3 weeks of Remembrancetide, a period of sustained frenetic activity for volunteers. The poppy collectors you see in the streets (I kept my 2018 badge above) are familiar but what goes on behind the scenes is amazing.
I have a memory of sitting on the office floor with a sandwich before going out again, other collectors squeezing past with full containers, Ron, the secretary, at a desk keeping expert track of everything. And to add to the bedlam - Len, the retired engineer, on his back like a car mechanic, fixing yet, yet, yet again the clanking old counting machine donated by the bank. Len only comes in once a week now, at other times fixing it by telephone. Amazing. Thus we remember the dead by helping the living. The Kindle edition of In Our Fathers' Footsteps, see books, now available at only 99p. Proceeds to the Royal British Legion, so the more people take a punt at it, the more the Legion can do for those affected by war. It is up on Amazon but not yet linked to the paperback on the same details page. Here are some images from the book because colour images especially are at their best on a computer screen. |
AuthorIt's almost two years since I published In Our Fathers' Footsteps (see under BOOKS). My latest book, One Dog and His Cop, about my cousin's police dog,was published 30 November this year (see under BOOKS). Archives
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