The training centred around a long abandoned stone quarry near the reservoirs at Redmires. If you walked by there today you probably would not realise that stone quarrying ever happened on that raised ground or that just over a hundred years ago young men in khaki uniforms dug trenches and played war games there - where curlews cry and meadow pipits now swoop..
It has been a long time since I last investigated that hummocky ground but yesterday I was up there again. To my surprise there was a new addition to the landscape - a clever tubular shape depicting a soldier with a bowed head, a heavy pack on his back and a rifle in his hands. On the plinth he stood upon were these enigmatic words; "There But Not There".
Upon my travels to find the heart of England, I have seen figures like this before. All the same - standing in silence with bowed heads. Back home on the computer, I discovered that they belong to a commemorative art project called "There But Not There" - set up to mark the centenary of the end of that so-called "Great War". I am surprised that I did not know about this before.
Sadly or symbolically, the soldier I saw yesterday had lost his bayonet and the end of his rifle. He won't be killing anybody else in a hurry.
______________________________________________________________
There But Not There
There but not there
Once here but not here
Men's voices on the wind
Where curlews now cry
Above your head
Sorry for the loss
Of innocence
And a toll of death
That made no sense
Listen - for their agonies
Are everywhere
Still
There but not there
The glorious dead.
I do remember that project. We have two of the sculptures standing either side of the entrance to one of our parish halls. They look very effective against the stark, white walls. A reminder of so many lives lost.
ReplyDeleteLord knows how many of them are out there. Perhaps an entire army!
DeleteLike you, I had not heard of the project. Had I come across that sculpture in the middle of the moors I think I would have felt a very distinct shiver down my spine.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to be the modern shortcut way for statuary. Not skilfully carved stone but tubular steel bent on a machine.
DeleteI recall seeing those "statues" in the news in 2018. A lovely idea. My grandfather joined the Royal Artillery and I believe he first trained at Catterick and then exercised horses on the beaches at Littlehampton, before he went out to fight at Mons.
ReplyDeleteShould we deduce that he came back as most men did? But with what terrible memories?
DeleteYes, he made it back, having fought at Mons, Ypres and then Paschendale. He lost an eye, though, and had shrapnel wounds that caused problems all his life, as the shrapnel moved around. He witnessed the horse he cared for being blown up too. Yet I never heard him speak much about it.
DeleteNot many men did. They tried to leave it all there - back in Hell but of course that is more easily said than done. I often think that the underlying reason my maternal grandfather walked out on my grandmother in 1930 was connected with his experiences at The Somme.
DeleteI like the way the landscape appears through the soldier. They are both one and the same and a part of each other.
ReplyDeleteThat is a poetic thought. I hadn't seen it in that way until you said it. Gratefully received.
DeleteVery attractive statue. It's a good way to remember the losses
ReplyDeleteMany left there heading for their deaths though many more survived.
DeleteI love this. It is a strong, yet simple way to remember the many soldiers that have fought and lost so much for us all.
ReplyDeleteI don't think we would want to tear down that kind of statue - but somebody has had a go. The bayonet has gone.
DeleteIt's a nice way to remember but I would prefer people not going off to war to die. I know we can't change the past but bloody hell, war and killing doesn't just kill bodies, it kills souls as well. I don't know what kind of a person my father would have been if he hadn't gone to war but it sure messed him up. Killing another person is a heavy burden for your soul to carry for the rest of your life.
ReplyDeleteSo many people who survive wars are broken inside. They carry the effects of war through the rest of their lives.
DeleteThis war was made as important to my brothers and myself as the next war. My dad was born in 1907, so this was was real to him, and probably more so because he was an unsupervised orphan. The army filled his mind as a career and he joined the day after he turned 17. VE day and VJ day I cannot recite, but he instilled the meaning of November 11th in all four of us.
ReplyDeleteI like the There but not there tribute, and the poppy. Ever the poppy.
Joanne, talking of poppies, I wonder how "poppycock" came about. YP will enlighten me.
DeleteYes, the meaning of November's remembrance. In the forthright way of the motherland's lingo (a spade is a spade) we think of our dead on, loosely translated, "Sunday of the Dead", also known as "Silent Day", a day of national mourning, when we pay tribute to those gone before us.
I have lived in England most my adult life and never ever have bought, or worn, a poppy. Neither have I reflected on why this is so. Maybe it's because I don't need to wear my heart in my buttonhole for all the world to see.
U
Leaving artistic merits of above depiction aside I don't like to be reminded of war in any form. I find it depressing beyond words. And I say this as someone of a hugely sunny temperament, not easily perturbed.
ReplyDeleteOne of the first things drummed into me, at school and at home, that history matters. Because we LEARN from it. Well, you could have fooled me. I did take my history lessons seriously, still do. I think my fondest memory is Hammurabi of Babylon; mainly because it sounds so melodic. And is such a long time ago. And then there was ten sixty six. 1066. As numbers go you can't beat it. Not least when you have to remember it (for a pub quiz).
U
Interesting. I hadn't heard anything about that project either. (And I haven't come across any figures in London, at least not that I recall.) That last photo is quite dramatic.
ReplyDelete