From floor to skyward and around the next corner, name upon name, life upon life.
P. Ferguson image, August 2018.
Thread Five
The steady crunch of loose gravel beneath our feet announces our arrival to the names recorded here. As we move across from stone to grass the silence is heartfelt…it is respect. A mist upon the horizon, silhouettes at the Stone of Remembrance…the shock of looking upon the Thiepval Memorial for the first time. For some this place, recording more than 73,000 lives, is overwhelming. They console each other within each other’s arms…trying to find words…but still it is too much. All the while rain falls within this structure, pooling tears only adds to the hurt.
For one within our group their reaction records a racing mind trying to respond to the enormous presence of this loss, these persons missing on the Somme.
This is unbelievable. This is…it’s just…it’s…um…it’s the only word……….”but to whom the fortune of war denied the known and and honoured burial given to their comrades in death”…so these guys are just lying out there?….unbelievable…..unbelievable…the absolute magnitude of this…I guess it has to symbolize that 73,000 were not laid to rest, not resting…but remembered…[Thiepval] you have to go there and step onto it, to understand it…and why it is there.
As we leave we step again through the silence and across the crunch of gravel. If names might have memory, they understand that we can return home whilst their silent vigil, for all time, continues through the crunch and silence of visitors.
——-SNIP——-
Previously published Pipes of War website, 9 August 2018