The Dust of Each Conflict

White roses in bloom at the tall pillared entrance to the Imperial War Museum, London.
The Imperial War Museum, Lambeth North, London.
The repository of collections that were first gathered during the Great War.
P. Ferguson image, August 2018.

Thread Twelve

The heat wave has relented and for much of the day we venture forward in the downpour. Rain-water bounces off the taut umbrella towards me managing to find those points at the neckline where it can scurry its chill down one’s back. Meanwhile, I attempt to skirt the roaring streams that run along the curbs in search of drains that attempt to gulp the waves as they come towards them. The drains and my improvised two-step are not successful.

Still one ought not to complain, soldiers and civilians endured much worse on active service and on the home front. Finding an overhang, I stand beneath hoping there may be an ebb to this tide, but not this tide. I carry on.

A shriveled leather glove affected by poison gas lies within a dome glass display case isolated from all other things.
Evidence of chemical warfare are illustrated at the Imperial War Museum with this shriveled glove having gone through such an attack. Damage to lung, eyes and skin was horrific.
P. Ferguson image, August 2018.

Arriving at the Imperial War Museum I seek out a few specific exhibits to snap, and then conduct a reconnaissance of the gift shops anticipating a volume or two to rest amongst others in a tall stack of reading to do. Though centenary titles continue to abound, we are starting to see interest in the immediate aftermath of this conflict that gave birth to the world as we know it today.

A sign from the Western Front. Brown with white letters it has much evidence of having been targeted hit with the aimed and hurtling debris of war.
A well fired upon Great War sign “Do Not Stand About Here”.
Imperial War Museum Collection.
P. Ferguson image, August 2018

Treaties, nations, political parties, demobilization, employment, veterans’ welfare, rehabilitation, prostheses, mental health, families, widows, memorialization and more. The Great War may have an end date with the armistice, 11 November 1918, but its after affects will continue…and then there will be another conflict…a Second World War with its own ramifications, its own openings and conclusions, but the dust of each conflict will never truly settle for years to come.

A soldier straddles the wall of the muddy tench. His boots within the mud he looks downward...we do not see his face but the top and rim of his helmet. He is wearing a trenchcoat.
A Great War soldier making his way through the wet and person clinging mud of the trenches.
P. Ferguson image, August 2018.

——-SNIP——-

Previously published Pipes of War website, 16 August 2018