Every war sears itself into living memory; with time, all memory fades...
In my mind lives a sliver of William Wood.
Bill Wood, a working class lad from an industrial town, was one of 250,000 underage British men who saw active duty. “A lady on the bus” gave him a white feather, the symbol of cowardliness. He added three years to his age and enlisted. By the time his widowed mother learned of this, Bill was in an Irish training camp, the one his elder brother had passed through a few weeks before. “Well, at least Tom will look out for our Bill,” she said, a sad mix of innocence and fortitude. Years later, his elder sister told her niece, my grandmother, this story. “Tom came back. Our Bill didn’t.”
No one believed it could happen
Bill sent his mother a photograph taken in France, preserved for decades, and then discarded in a move. I remember it; a thin, flat piece of wood, small enough to comfortably fit in a child’s hand. There was a shabby image on the front of a young man with a long, drawn face. The man’s service cap rested on a short column, his hand lightly on top of it. The photograph was taken to commemorate the promotion of Lance-Corporal William Wood.
How it happened…
I know nothing more about Bill. I don’t know why he was promoted, or when or where or how he died. I don’t know if he liked school, could swim, or ever fell in love. I don’t know what color his hair was, if his brother teased him, if he liked strawberry jam.
…and why.
Even if I still had this photo, it could not make real to me a man dead more than a century. It could only remind me of those who gave their lives in a war that ended just beyond living memory. All that remains of them now are names on memorials honoring the war dead; on faded rolls of honor; on dusty monuments in houses of worship. In an album there is a faded postcard with a postmark from 1915, “von Onkel Frank,” written in now-brown ink from a fountain pen. Tossed in a drawer there is a ribbon-tied bundle of letters, labeled carefully “au Marie, de frère Yves,” and, in a pencil scribble, “pour cousine Annette?” Once cherished recollections are vanishing.
As the centenary of the start of the First World War approached, the Church of England declared a memorial service would be held in churches for each member of the parish who had served in the war, on the anniversary of his or her death. For most of these - soldiers, sailors, members of the Merchant Marines, nurses, ambulance drivers - it will be the last time their names are spoken.
How it was for those who fought…
People always expect to remember the fallen, to pass their memories on. Yet, I have no family stories of the Roman Invasion, of the Norman Conquest, of Agincourt, of Waterloo, of the Siege of Sevastopol...
However, we can honor the fallen with the hope for peace. My grandmother had another memory of the First World War. Two or three years into the fighting, when she was about ten years old, she was in an isolation ward. Her family were not allowed to visit. Day after day, screens were place around beds to shield from sight dying children. One night, a German prisoner of war, working as an orderly, comforted the lonely and frightened girl, standing by her bed, holding her hand, and singing to her in German. For them, at the moment, there was no war, only the eternal and all-pervading image of a man nurturing a child, the promise that one day our differences will no longer be settled by the sacrifices of forgotten men’s and women’s lives.
A hundred years ago, on November 11th, 1918, at 5 a.m., the Armistice of Compiègne was signed. All combat was to cease six hours later. The fighting which had dominated the world for four years and killed ten million on the field of battle was over.
Bill Wood, a working class lad from an industrial town, was one of 250,000 underage British men who saw active duty. “A lady on the bus” gave him a white feather, the symbol of cowardliness. He added three years to his age and enlisted. By the time his widowed mother learned of this, Bill was in an Irish training camp, the one his elder brother had passed through a few weeks before. “Well, at least Tom will look out for our Bill,” she said, a sad mix of innocence and fortitude. Years later, his elder sister told her niece, my grandmother, this story. “Tom came back. Our Bill didn’t.”No one believed it could happen
Bill sent his mother a photograph taken in France, preserved for decades, and then discarded in a move. I remember it; a thin, flat piece of wood, small enough to comfortably fit in a child’s hand. There was a shabby image on the front of a young man with a long, drawn face. The man’s service cap rested on a short column, his hand lightly on top of it. The photograph was taken to commemorate the promotion of Lance-Corporal William Wood.How it happened…
I know nothing more about Bill. I don’t know why he was promoted, or when or where or how he died. I don’t know if he liked school, could swim, or ever fell in love. I don’t know what color his hair was, if his brother teased him, if he liked strawberry jam.…and why.
Even if I still had this photo, it could not make real to me a man dead more than a century. It could only remind me of those who gave their lives in a war that ended just beyond living memory. All that remains of them now are names on memorials honoring the war dead; on faded rolls of honor; on dusty monuments in houses of worship. In an album there is a faded postcard with a postmark from 1915, “von Onkel Frank,” written in now-brown ink from a fountain pen. Tossed in a drawer there is a ribbon-tied bundle of letters, labeled carefully “au Marie, de frère Yves,” and, in a pencil scribble, “pour cousine Annette?” Once cherished recollections are vanishing.
As the centenary of the start of the First World War approached, the Church of England declared a memorial service would be held in churches for each member of the parish who had served in the war, on the anniversary of his or her death. For most of these - soldiers, sailors, members of the Merchant Marines, nurses, ambulance drivers - it will be the last time their names are spoken.How it was for those who fought…
People always expect to remember the fallen, to pass their memories on. Yet, I have no family stories of the Roman Invasion, of the Norman Conquest, of Agincourt, of Waterloo, of the Siege of Sevastopol...
and how it seems to us
However, we can honor the fallen with the hope for peace. My grandmother had another memory of the First World War. Two or three years into the fighting, when she was about ten years old, she was in an isolation ward. Her family were not allowed to visit. Day after day, screens were place around beds to shield from sight dying children. One night, a German prisoner of war, working as an orderly, comforted the lonely and frightened girl, standing by her bed, holding her hand, and singing to her in German. For them, at the moment, there was no war, only the eternal and all-pervading image of a man nurturing a child, the promise that one day our differences will no longer be settled by the sacrifices of forgotten men’s and women’s lives.
A hundred years ago, on November 11th, 1918, at 5 a.m., the Armistice of Compiègne was signed. All combat was to cease six hours later. The fighting which had dominated the world for four years and killed ten million on the field of battle was over.
- Mary Elizabeth A., Hickory Corner Branch
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