Dan Jarvis: Personal journey in remembrance of Barnsley Pals

On Armistice Day 1918, the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, came to the House of Commons and announced the end of what he described as the war to end all wars. Today we know that it was not that, but it was the war that changed
life in this country for ever.

The First World War touched every family, affected every community and fundamentally altered our country’s place in the world.

It took the lives of 16 million soldiers and civilians across the globe, including around 900,000 servicemen from Britain and the Commonwealth. It was a conflict that transformed society, bringing about profound social, political and economic changes that we can still feel today. The centenary commemorations provide us with a unique opportunity to reflect on that, to pay tribute to those who served and sacrificed for us 100 years ago, and to pass those memories on to future generations.

The commemorations programme has our full support, and I would like to put on record our thanks to the thousands of organisations, community groups and dedicated volunteers who are making this happen across the country. I would like to say a particular word about
the battlefield tours programme for schools, which is being delivered by the Institute of Education.

There are few better ways to connect our young people with those who made the ultimate sacrifice on the Western Front than by taking them to walk the battlefields where so many fought and died. Anyone who has visited those cemeteries will know what a moving and powerful experience that is. There were 16,000 towns and villages across Britain in 1914, but only 40 of them – 40 thankful parishes – would reach 1918 without having lost someone in the conflict, so every visiting school will be able to follow in the footsteps of soldiers from their own community.

Last month, I travelled to Serre in northern France to retrace the route taken by the Barnsley Pals battalions from my constituency. These were the men who responded to Lord Kitchener’s famous recruitment poster in 1914. They included miners, glassworkers, clerks, stonemasons and clerics, many of them friends and neighbours.

They joined up together; they trained together; they went to war together; and ultimately, many of them died together. I walked the ground over which the Barnsley Pals fought at the Battle of the Somme, and I stood in front of their graves in the pouring rain. Looking out from those trench positions that still scar the French countryside, I imagined what it must have been like. It was hard not be overcome by the emotion of what happened there.

Later that day, we visited the memorial to the missing at Thiepval. As I read the names inscribed on the memorial, that I suddenly saw my own name, “D. Jarvis”, staring back at me. It was a sobering moment that brought home the scale of the sacrifice, and an experience that so many visitors to the battlefield will have had.

Our country’s deployments over the past 13 years in Afghanistan and Iraq have now lasted over three times longer than the First World War; 632 servicemen and women have lost their lives, and we have felt the pain of each and every one of them, so it is hard to imagine now what it must have been like to live through a conflict that took the lives of six times that many soldiers every week, or to appreciate how much the country was wounded by the first day of the battle of the Somme, when 20,000 men were cut down on a single beautiful summer’s day on July 1, 1916.

As well as the silent tributes we will pay, there will also be room for lively debate and discussion. We should not shy away from talking about the
anti-war movement, about the protest that took place against the war, and about those who refused to fight as a matter of conscience.

As well as remembering the brave sacrifice of those on the front line, it is very important that we take the opportunity to include in this discussion the heroes who served our country on the home front, because we know that the First World War reached far beyond the poppy fields of Flanders. These commemorations should also
tell the story of the people who kept this country going: the miners; the factory and railway workers; and those who worked the land and cared for the wounded.

Dan Jarvis is the Labour MP for Barnsley Central and Shadow Justice Minister. He spoke in a Commons debate on the First World War commemorations.