A foggy morning of November remembrance

‘When you go home, tell them of us and say, for your tomorrow we gave our today’.

As the country again unites, at the eleventh hour, on the eleventh day, in the eleven month, the nation will once more fall silent as we remember the dead of two World Wars and sadly many more minor conflicts.

We will again bow our heads and for two minutes pay our respects to those who paid the ultimate price. I have tried many times, but I cannot think of any other occasion when so many people across the nation, at the very same moment in time, focus their attention on the same sober thought.

Last year, a few days after Remembrance Day, I found myself on the Somme battlefield in Northern France. An eighteen-mile trench-line well written into our nation’s history for the battle that took place there from July to November 1916, at the very height, some would say the turning point, of World War One. A battle that cost as many as one million lives, where on the first day, 1st July 1916, the Allies suffered over 57,000 casualties; one for every eighteen inches of their front line.

But after visiting the Somme for many years, this visit held a strange sensation – it was near deserted. No tourist coaches or groups of schoolchildren, hoping to learn and understand what it was like for a lost generation. Not even the all-too-familiar and regular sightseers with guidebook in hand, slowing making their way, village to village. Just the occasional farmer carting sugar beet off the water sodden fields, to the loud roar of his tractor, struggling with the Somme mud.

Not only was it abandoned in a way I have not seen in a very long time, but it was also very foggy, the kind of fog that made you drive along the country lanes with great caution, at a very slow speed. It gave the deserted battlefield a very eerie and haunting feeling, especially if you add the cold damp air that chilled you to the bone.

That morning, walking the old front line several times, I peered across the battlefield, watching the fog and mist rolling through, to see the same view that a soldier of the Great War would have seen. But he would have seen mustard gas drifting across no-man’s land towards his trench. He would then have heard the trench-rattle warning him of the imminent gas attack, before he coughed and gasped for breath.

That morning’s damp fog dulled and muffled every sound, so standing on the front-line trenches listening carefully, I almost wanted to hear the chattering of the soldiers from that lost generation. At one point it became uncomfortable, as a silhouetted figure walked slowly and silently, coming towards me out of the fog. But it was not a ghostly soldier of times gone by, just a lone farmer who welcomed me with a nod of his head and warming ‘Bonjour’.

My first stop that morning was the village of Foncquevillers; not an easy name to say in our Anglo-Saxon tongue and still often referred to as ‘Funky Villers’, a name the village was given by Tommy during the Battle of the Somme. At the back of the village is the Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s cemetery; like so many cemeteries it is immaculately kept, with mown grass and the English cottage garden plants and flowers littered amongst the headstones. Even the autumn carpet of recent fallen leaves adding to thoughts of home. It suddenly reminded me of the war poet Rupert Brooke and his poem ‘The Soldier’: ‘…there’s some corner of a foreign field, that is forever England’.

That morning, I was looking to catch up with an ‘old friend’, one I had visited numerous times, an ‘old friend’ who died on the morning of 1st July 1916, but he was no soldier. Captain John Green was a Regimental Medical Officer, a doctor, serving with a Derbyshire Territorial Battalion. On that morning in July 1916, he was awarded the Victoria Cross, posthumously; the highest award for valour in the face of the enemy, one of nine to be awarded that fateful day. His award was not for leading men in a charge on an enemy position, but for going into no-man’s land and rescuing an injured officer, Captain Frank Robinson, who was caught and tangled on the German barbed wire and unable to free himself.

That morning, Captain John Green crossed towards the Germans’ line, untangled his colleague and dragged him to a nearby shell hole where he dressed his wounds, despite the torrent of rifle and shell fire and the Germans throwing grenades at them. After dressing his wounds, he continued to drag and carry his patient back over no-man’s land, in full sight of the enemy guns, back to the safety of his own trenches. Captain John Green had married Edith Moss, also a doctor, on New Year’s Day 1916, but just as he was about to reach safety, he was shot again and fatally wounded. Sadly his patient, Captain Robinson, died the following day.

Captain John Green VC now rests in the corner of the cemetery under the shade of a tree. I had my moment of remembrance as I left a Poppy Cross by his grave, then my two minutes’ silence standing with him. Thoughts of his brave actions and his humanity in what must have been absolutely horrific conditions were in my mind.

With the fog easing, just slightly, it was time to carefully drive along the Somme front line, south past the Memorial to the Missing of the Somme, at Thiepval, on which is engraved over 73,000 names of the fallen, who have no known grave. The monument, which is normally dominating the skyline as you approach, could hardly be seen, with the top eerily disappearing into the damp morning fog.

I have lost count of how many times I have explored the Somme battlefield on foot and travelled by bicycle, car and coach to find a special place of remembrance. In doing this, I have had the immense pleasure of helping relatives understand what it was like for a long-lost grandfather or great uncle in the summer of 1916, living in the trenches during hand-to-hand combat. Then to find where that family member rests and the reason why they are there. In doing so I have shared some very private, emotional and moving moments, but I feel sure I will remember my remembrance pilgrimage, to visit an ‘old friend’ on that foggy, eerie and haunting morning for a long time.

Words and photographs: Matt Limb

To find out more about Matt Limb OBE and his battlefield tours, go to www.mlbft.co.uk

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