Eleventh

How dank and still the air has been these past few days. A few autumn leaves hang on without a whiff of wind to disturb them. It was like that on the morning of November 11th 1918 when George Allison was shot dead by a German sniper at Mons. He was the last British soldier to be killed on the battlefield in The Great War. What was so "great" about it I wonder? All accounts suggest that it was truly awful - not great.

As I usually do, I walked up to the simple war memorial next to All Saints Church and stood there in quiet remembrance as the bells chimed eleven times. There were two people from the cafe and about twenty small children from the church playgroup with their leaders. Those children stayed remarkably quiet.

I put a beach stone on the plinth. I had written "Thank You" on it with a permanent black marker and a single poppy too.

Normally, when I am standing there, my thoughts wander to my Uncle Jack and all the other young men who never came home. What a terrible waste it all was. But this year my thoughts also drifted to Ukraine and the Russian threat and how the peace we have taken for granted for so many years is now in jeopardy.

I took a diversion home through the churchyard and spotted the grave of Lieutenant Joseph Austin Sorby. He died on April 4th 1918 here in Sheffield but not I believe from war wounds. It was a duodenal ulcer that got him - with associated complications. He belonged to the Australian Field Artillery.

All those young men - mostly men anyway - they did not make the wars they died in. They were made by other men far from the front line, far from the battlefield. Of The First World War it was said that it was "the war to end all wars" but of course the century that has followed proved that not to be the case - again and again. 

When will they ever learn?

As I walked home via the graveyard this song by Pete Seeger came to mind. He first wrote it in 1955 after reading "And Quiet Flows The Don" by Mikhail Sholohkov. Over to you Joan...