Andrew Vine: Anniversaries that bring home the tragedy of war

They were certainly going to be out in my home, as I joined an act of commemoration and remembrance as simple as it was symbolic of our country entering the Great War 100 years ago as the chimes of Big Ben struck 11.

That night, the then Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, stood on a balcony in Whitehall and mused: “The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.”

His words still have the power to chill, as he foresaw the darkness into which the continent was about to be plunged, hence last night’s act of remembrance in which only a single light was left burning for the hour running up to 11pm.

Let’s hope that children staying up later than usual because it is the school holidays took part, for a commemoration that reaches into their own homes is likely to make a real impression on them and could well spark the curiosity to learn more about the war.

Anniversaries of war come thick and fast upon us in the months ahead, moving us profoundly because they bring remembrance into the places we hold so dear – our homes.

Today marks the day that the Royal Navy fired the first British shot of World War One, when the destroyer HMS Lance shelled the German minelayer Königin Luise off the Dutch coast, prompting the ship to be scuttled. The anniversary will be marked by a gun salute from HMS Mersey.

It is an anniversary that exerts a powerful pull on the British psyche because the sea is in our blood, as it is for all island nations. War on land was cruel enough, but the hazards of the sea could be an enemy as dangerous as any battleship flying a hostile flag.

In Yorkshire, two Great War anniversaries loom that are as poignant as anything that will be commemorated between now and 2018 because they are about the lives – and deaths – of the ordinary people of our county who bore the suffering of the conflict. They are also about our homes.

The first speaks of how the hopes and expectations of Yorkshire that summer were so tragically misguided, as men from all walks of life flooded to recruiting offices to volunteer for enlistment in what became known as the Pals battalions in which those who worked together went to war shoulder-to-shoulder.

There really was a belief that it would all be over by Christmas, and that the Germans would be sent packing by the men who signed up in Leeds, Bradford, Barnsley, Hull and Sheffield where placards went up pointing the way to where to enlist that read: “To Berlin – via Corn Exchange.”

Vast crowds saw the Leeds Pals on their way from the railway station that autumn, singing and cheering. Less than two years later, as most of the Pals battalions were decimated on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, July 1, 1916, Yorkshire was numb with shock and grief.

The second anniversary that touches Yorkshire especially closely lies on December 16 – the centenary of the bombardment of Scarborough, Whitby and Hartlepool by German warships that left 137 dead and 592 injured, children among them, in an attack that outraged British public opinion.

Both anniversaries underline how close to home the Great War came for Yorkshire, which can never be stressed too much in our remembrance of the conflict.

Whether in the munitions factories of the West Riding, or on the moors where moss and wild garlic was gathered to manufacture wound dressings to be sent to the front the war was fought from Yorkshire’s cities, towns and villages as well as by the men from so many homes where the curtains were kept closed as a sign of mourning.

How close to home it all came is one of the reasons that last night mattered. Families living in houses built more than 100 years ago must have wondered, as they extinguished all but a single lamp, who occupied them in 1914.

Did a young man go rushing out of the front door to the recruiting office to sign up, and return to show off the King’s shilling he had received? Was his family amongst the cheering crowds as the train steamed out of the station, because they believed he would be back for Christmas? Did neighbours later pass quietly by because they saw the curtains closed for days on end?

Our Yorkshire anniversaries of the months ahead remind us more powerfully than anything else that the battlefield diaries, or arguments over strategies and the competence of commanders, or grainy, silent footage of men dug into trenches in a devastated wasteland tell only part of the story of the Great War.

Our anniversaries tell us that the story of the war is also about how close to home it came.