Andrew Vine: A time to keep the memory of the fallen alive

A ROSE was just beginning to come into bud at the foot of Private James Knighton's headstone as the 100th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme approached.
Armistice Day coincides with the centenary of the Battle of the Somme.Armistice Day coincides with the centenary of the Battle of the Somme.
Armistice Day coincides with the centenary of the Battle of the Somme.

It would have been in full bloom by July 1, a living flower to complement the bouquets laid in all the Somme’s military cemeteries to honour the 19,240 British soldiers killed on that terrible day in 1916.

For me, nowhere along the 15-mile battlefront where fighting raged for 141 of the most savage days in history is there a more eloquent or moving tribute to the lost than the words on this Sheffield volunteer’s headstone.

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“Still lives, still loves, still ours, will meet again, Ma and Dad”.

A mother and father’s grief and loss speak to us in those simple, heartfelt words that somehow retain such immediacy they might have been carved only yesterday, and not a century ago.

Perhaps their power to move lies in how timeless the sentiments are, how they give voice to a pain that remains unchanging irrespective of era or conflict.

They might be the words of parents who grieved for lost sons in the Second World War, Korea, Northern Ireland, the Falklands, Iraq or Afghanistan, and resonate forcefully on this Armistice Day.

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Our observance of two minutes’ silence at 11am has even more poignancy than usual in this 100th anniversary year of the beginning of the Battle of the Somme, especially here in Yorkshire. That is because the fate of our county’s volunteers – the “Pals” battalions slaughtered on the battle’s opening day – is the story of the bloodiest episode in British military history.

Just as his parents’ words speak for every family that has mourned, so James Knighton embodies all the soldiers for whom we wear poppies and pause to reflect today and on Remembrance Sunday.

He was only 24 – far from being the youngest of the 57,470 British casualties that day, but still far too young to have been laid to rest in a grave in the French countryside.

Like thousands of others in Leeds, Hull, Barnsley, Bradford and Sheffield, he had volunteered to serve alongside friends, neighbours and workmates in the battalions raised in the heady autumn of 1914 when the country believed it would all be over by Christmas.

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The soon-to-be enlisted Private Knighton would have seen the placards pointing the way to the Sheffield City Battalion recruiting office that read: “To Berlin – via Corn Exchange.”

Now a road sign near the village of Serre, in the rolling hills of Picardy, which he and so many of the other Yorkshire volunteers died trying to take, points the way up a dusty farm track to Queens Cemetery, where he lies, only yards from memorials to the Pals at the edge of a wood where the ground is scarred by shell craters.

More visitors are making their way up that farm track with every passing year, following in the footsteps of the Pals, as new generations moved by their stories make the pilgrimage to the Somme.

School parties go there to learn what happened, and descendants to lay flowers at the graves of relatives they only know from sepia-tinted photographs of the volunteers posing proudly for the camera in their new uniforms.

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There are many more of them now than when I first started visiting the battlefields of Europe 30 years ago, and the increasing numbers are among the reasons why Britain is increasingly observant of the two minutes’ silence on Armistice Day.

Once witnessed, the impact of the loss those immaculately-kept military cemeteries represent can never be forgotten. To walk amongst the rows of graves and read the ages – often 17, 18 or 19 – brings home the scale of the sacrifice with powerful emotional force.

But another reason why millions of us will bow our heads and observe today’s act of remembrance is that we are all too conscious that sacrifice is not the preserve of long-lost generations.

The losses of Iraq and Afghanistan have given Britain a new appreciation that we ask of our armed forces now no less than was asked of James Knighton and his comrades.

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That is why many more poppies are sold, and worn proudly, than two decades ago, and why increasing numbers of workplaces fall silent at 11am.

Past and present are joined together in those two minutes, and it is one of the most potent symbols of our enduring decency as a nation that we choose to stop and think of others unknown to us with thankfulness and respect.

Armistice Day is also a time to remind ourselves how fragile peace is in a world where Russia sends a battle fleet through the English Channel on its way to Syria and Vladimir Putin drops dark hints about nuclear weapons if the West stands in his way.

Just as James Knighton’s parents kept his memory alive in their hearts, so should we. For in doing so, we honour not just Yorkshire’s Pals but every man and woman of today’s armed forces.