The Pity of War

As I have been working out in France and Belgium for the past nine years I thought it might be a good idea to show my parents what I have been doing and the work that No-Man's-Land have achieved over the years. But before I could go anywhere, I called up to Mr Main who was frothing at the mouth about the new bass he had swapped some of Pedals for. I have to admit it's pretty fucking cool as it was sent from the bassist from Fu Manchu. We also discussed the slight possibility of getting back stage at the upcoming Slayer gig. Watch this space...

As part of the trip out to the Somme, we stopped off in Cambridge for a look about and the worst lunch I've had for a long time. The next stop was a hotel in Folkstone close to the Channel Tunnel. We realised why Folkstone is called Old Folkstone for a good reason when confronted with the instructions for summoning assistance in the hotel:

And to help those forgetful enough to leave their windows open:

My room would not have been out of place on the set of Barton Fink and I half expected John Goodman to come bursting through the door surrounded by fire during the night. The following morning's tunnel crossing was no problem, as usual, and we found ourselves at Vimy Ridge. I did some work here a long time ago, but we weren't able to access the site as it was on private land and had to content ourselves with looking at the imposing memorial. You'd think the Canadians won the bloody war, given the size of it.

A quick history lesson for the folks and then a trip into Arras and the Brussel's Cafe for lunch. As usual, it was cheap and cheerful. We called into the Town Hall to see the underground tunnels (Boves) under the hall itself and met Arras' giants. They were pretty quiet, but I suppose it was the end of a Bank Holiday, so they may have been a bit tired by then:

The Boves under the Town Hall had an exhibition based on the gardens of the Palace of Versailles. The results were staggering:

Les Jardin des Boves

 

Versailles

We were really lucky to catch this show. Pushing on we arrived at Ocean Villas, our home for the next few days. My folks were to meet the legend that is Avril Williams, who as ever was a convivial host. The following morning was trip up to the Ulster Tour and Thiepval Woods.

Carol had arranged for Teddy and Phoebe to give us the keys to the new gate so I could do a private tour.

Apparently as we were going into the woods, we were spotted by a battlefield guide and word spread quickly back to the Tower. At least they are vigilant about intruders going into the woods. Interfering bastards. A trip up to the Thiepval Memorial was on the agenda next:

This was followed by a look in at the Glory Hole where Peter Barton was running an excavation there. I was introduced to Peter, who shook my hand and told me he'd heard of me. I have absolutely no idea how. The excavations looked interesting but we didn't get a chance to go down the tunnels as structural engineers were working down them making them safe. Following this we called in at Lochnagar crater.

By the time we had a cup of coffee it was time to head back for dinner. A busy and successful day!

The morning brought a short walk over to the Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Memorial Park, we had a chuckle at the 'danger tree' and I explained to the folks that the trenches they were looking at were probably from 1918 rather than 1916. Also, as we were standing at the Caribu monument waiting for our turn to take in the view I was earwigging a tour operator pontificating about his travels up and down the battlefields of France. His story involved taking his six year old son down to Verdun and allowing the lad to, not only, pick up potentially dangerous explosives, but ferret about for human remains. I'm not sure if he was an approved tour guide or was doing it out of the back of his beat up transit van. I assumed the latter.

The Caribu

We walked over the hill to the Hawthorne Ridge were we bumped into the two bikers that were over at Avril's the night before for dinner. Nice guys, but they were from Lancashire, so I refused to speak to them, or even acknowledge their existence. In fact, we saw their bikes at the bottom of the hill and I put sand in their petrol tanks. That'll show them.

Fucked

I showed my folks the highlights of my favourite part of the Somme and explained what had happened there through the medium of printed period photos from the Battle of the Somme film.

The Lancashire Fusiliers at the Sunken Lane:


Hawthorne Ridge mine explosion:



The next stop was the large cemetery on the Pozieres Road, with a glass of beer at Le Tommy Cafe. We had stopped here in order to see the 'museum' that Dominic has in the back garden. I've seen it before and it is certainly a sight to behold, but for all the wrong reasons. He seemed to have recently built a breeze block wall around his garden and was now charging five Euro to go and see the original First War uniforms rotting away in the rain. So we declined this offer and had a quick run out to Delville Wood to see the last surviving tree then back to Avril's for dinner.

As with all holidays the end comes around very quickly and Friday brought us the sights of Mailly-Maillet Church:

Then a drive over to Serre Road Cemetery number 2 to see the grave of the British soldier I helped excavate back in 2003:

Down the road I showed my parents the No-Man's-Land memorial erected for Albert Thieleke, Jakob Hones and the Unknown British soldier all found within metres of one another in 2003.

After having a look at the Sheffield Pals Battalion memorial and the Sheffield memorial park, we drove out to Fricourt German cemetery and called in at the Games Workshop designed 38th (Welsh) Memorial at Mametz Wood.

 Sheffield Pals Battalion Memorial, Serre

The Red Baron's plot at Fricourt German Cemetery. He was later moved back to the Richthofen family plot in Germany

My Dragon has 30 hit points and a strength of 14. You need to roll over 16 to hit it on a D20...

A quick call in at the Butte De Warlencourt was required as I had never stopped off there in all the years I have been going to the Somme.

The final night was marked by my father nearly coming to blows with a dumb Daily Mail reading bloke who was also in residence at Avril's that evening. I was talking to him after my mother dragged my father away to bed to diffuse the situation. He was very apologetic and I put him straight on a few of his misunderstandings of the First World War. In all, we had a great time, even if I did spend the entire time making everything up as I know fuck all about the First World War. I told them the British attacked on the Somme whilst riding elephants, that's why they lost so many men, as the targets were so big. And the entire British population was wiped out on the 1st of July 1916. Or summat like that.

Nerdism Squared

He-Who-Cannot-Be-Named was whining about seeing more photos from the Stormtroopers, so here they are some behind the scenes shots:

Who's Horse? (In a Northumbrian accent) Why, It's War Horse!

Von He-Who-Cannot-Be-Named rocked up his white stallion on Sunday afternoon to deliver my monthly thrashing and to drag me to see War Horse, the film he's been raving about all year. He hates horses and war, so this was the perfect film for him. I wanted to see it as well, because I'm SUCH A MASSIVE FAN OF THE BOOK, YOU KNOW, THAT BOOK THAT IS FOR CHILDREN. CHILDREN, NOT 37 YEAR OLD MEN.

Read an adult book, you slack jawed cunt...

I actually wanted to see it because Dr David Kenyon and TV's Andy Robertshaw had done the military advising on the film and Andy appeared as an extra. It became a game of 'Spot TV's Andy Robertshaw'. I won it outright as Herr He-Who-Cannot-Be-Named doesn't know what TV's Andy Robertshaw looks like.

That's one nil to me

There will be spoilers from here on in, so if you want to go and see this film then don't read on, though why you would want to spend your hard earned cash on this lump of shit is beyond me. I wasn't expecting greatness in the first place and I certainly wasn't disappointed. The film is full of the usual World War One tropes, but that is not the worst thing about it. We were supposed to empathise with the horse but He-Who-Cannot-Be-Named and I were talking about what was so special about the horse and we couldn't work out why everyone human seemed to want to have a love affair with the beast. Sure, it was a good looking animal, but it was patently rubbish. Despite being able to plough a field like a modern mechanical tractor it couldn't jump. What kind of fucking horse can't jump? A shit one, that's what kind. I guess this was a plot device in order to allow the fucking dumb animal to get tangled up in barbed wire in No Man's Land so Tommy and Jerry could have a bonding experience whilst freeing it and demonstrating how futile the First World War was. This last scene was supposed to be tense, with threat of the horse being blinded or dying during the rescue, but all tension was lost when you realised that the film is about the horse and there is no way on God's green Earth that the producers will allow an animal to die on screen. It just became a farcical and over long scene.

Otto Dix was thrown off the production after the unveiling of his storyboard

Speaking of dying, there was another unfathomable factor in this movie. The human 'star', Albert, is given his father's cavalry pennant and this finds its way onto the horse's tack as the horse is taken off to war as a good luck charm. It actually does the exact opposite and brings black luck on anyone that happens across it. The young officer who first buys the horse is killed during an attack, the two young Germans who go AWOL with the horse are shot at dawn without a trial (give me fucking strength...) and then the young girl who seemingly spends two years (as dated by the German soldiers helmets...) trying to teach the fucking useless horse to jump ends up getting killed. Even Albert is scarred for life with a gas attack. What kind of luck is that?

 Where's me pennant?

The final scenes really wound me up, when Albert is reunited with the horse it is at an Advanced Dressing Station. The doctor on duty has been pulled out of dressing station to have a look at the horse which is wounded. Now, my first question is, why didn't the Private take the horse to the Veterinary Corps rather than a fucking human doctor? He would have known they existed as the British Army of 1918 was dependent on animals. Secondly, why was the doctor pulled out of the Dressing Station to look at a horse when the men he was supposed to be treating were dying? Why would a single horses life count more than humans? This is the main premise of the film, that we supposed to care more about the life and death of one horse over the thousands of injured and dying men.

Leave those men, a horse somewhere is injured!

Anyway, the horse is injured and the doctor declares it cannot be healed so recommends that it is to be put out of its misery and a Sergeant steps up to the task. This is when Albert reappears, does his stupid owl hoot call and everyone is happy and joyful that the horse is actually his and not just some random horse. But what everyone seemingly forgets is that the horse is still injured and should be put out of its misery. But this fact is conveniently forgotten and the horse miraculously survives its injuries! This is literally scratching the surface of what is wrong with this film and I neither have the inclination or energy to detail everything wrong with it. Modern conception of the First World War is as a futile and senseless waste of life. I would argue that War Horse was a futile and senseless waste of my life.

Anyway, I was actually told off by a woman sat next to me for laughing so hard at the film. She told me to get myself an Airfix kit, I told her I already had some. I'm not really sure what she meant by that insult. He-Who-Cannot-Be-Named suggested the film would have been better had it been filmed by Ken Loach and I can't help but agree with him.

One on Ten.

An Ecstasy of Fumbling

Yes, what did YOU do at the weekend? I bet you spent your weekend on your fat can shovelling jelly babies into your gaping maw. I bet you lay like a sloth ensconced on your sofa drooling at the latest idiots to parade across the screen in X Factor. I, on the other hand, spent last weekend in a replica First World War trench dressed in the Service Dress of a Great War soldier.

Now, I have made my opinion on re-enactors quite clear at this stage, I think, and you could level the accusation that I spent the weekend re-enacting, but this was certainly NOT re-enactment. Re-enactment involves a bunch of fat men dressing up like nineteen year old soldiers fielding questions from the public at stately homes before pretending to advance as a six man pike block and finally getting pissed up on mead at the campsite. Re-enactment is basically camping in period costume. This, on the other hand, was a tough challenge that was an attempt to understand a little of what the men of the Great War went through. TV's Andy Robertshaw is the luckiest man alive in that he has a patch of ground that he has constructed a Great War trench system in, complete with two fire bays, officers dugout, other ranks dugout, kitchen area (before it collapsed) and latrine.

Yes, that's me...

Andy was writing a book based on our experiences of being in a front line trench for 24 hours carrying out the trench duties that a soldier would have done in 1917. OK, so we weren't under the threat of death from artillery or snipers, but we certainly lived in the trenches pretty much as they would have been in 1917.

It was good fun, but beyond this there was a lot to be learnt. For instance, just the shear weight of Service Dress makes doing even the simplest job a drudging chore. even passing one another in the trench was a bloody hard job and led to argument and fighting:

The plan was to stay in the trench the entire night and although I almost made it, I knew I had a four hour drive back home the next day so made sure I got a few hours sleep at least. The problem was, in the firebay we were posted in the water had risen and taken away any space to sleep so by 4.00am the exhaustion was really kicking in:

Justin managed to stay out for the entire night however and sat on guard in our firebay:

The next morning after breakfast we got to write letters home, these were then passed on to the Lieutenant to censor. For some reason, mine passed censorship:

What we did get out of the experience was how much comradeship and laughter counted to keep us going through the night. The good humour of the British Tommy is famous and we were no exception. All in all, it was a great experience and I'm not going to relate everything that went on in that 24 hour period, you'll have to wait for the book to come out.

All photos by Dr David Kenyon and Martin Stiles.

Dulce et Decorum Est

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning,

We will remember them.