Somme

Thought I’d become more or less hardened over the years to the apalling events of the First World War but this, from Lyn McDonald’s “Somme,” literally sent a shiver down my spine-

As they neared the wood, between the roar of explosions, behind the sickening gas-soaked mist, in the forefront of the noise that raged at them from every horizon, the small party of West Yorkshires became aware of another sound. It was like nothing they had ever heard before. Later -and for the rest of his life- Lieutenant Hornshaw was to remember it as a sound that chilled the blood, a nerve-scraping noise like ‘enormous wet fingers screeching across an enormous pane of glass.’ It was coming from the wounded, lying out in No Man’s Land. Some screaming, some muttering, some weeping with fear, some calling for help, shouting in delirium, groaning with pain, the sounds of their distress had synthesised into one unearthly wail.
As midnight passed and the night of the first day turned into the dawn of the second, as the gunfire died down, it seemed to fill the air. All along the front, from the orchards of Gommecourt to the heights of Beaumont Hamel, from the shoulders of Thiepval, to the valley beyond la Boisselle, it rose from the battlefield into the night like the keening of a thousand banshees. Holding grimly to the remnants of their battered trenches, the battered remnants of the army shivered as they listened.

Just one day, in one battle in a long war. Now we quite rightly pay proper respect to each of our brave lads who fall in Afghanistan, and I quite often get a lump in my throat when I see the good people of Wooten Bassett lining the streets yet again. But for so many enheralded Tommies in the Great War there wasn’t even the meagre dignity of a proper burial.