The Cotton Spies

by Simon Glyndwr John

CHAPTER 70

  Plasov was sitting at his desk but to one side when the three Britons were marched into his presence. Beside Plasov looking as sullen and as unfriendly as ever Chevosky sat in what was normally the former’s chair at the middle of the desk.

  Plasov read from a piece of paper. ‘On instructions from Moscow, Sir Walter and Hutton are ordered to return to China immediately. I know you had selected tomorrow yourselves now it is an order from Moscow – don’t fail. You, Colonel Edrich, intended to go back later in the week I believe.’ He looked to Chevosky.

  Chevosky leered at Edrich over the paper,’ you will remain here until further notice.’

  ‘Why?’ Edrich leapt out of his chair in indignation – if he was going to stay he wanted it to be his idea not some thug’s.

  ‘Orders,’ snapped Plasov. He shrugged, ‘Comrade Chevosky will arrest you if you try and leave.’

  ‘What about the attempt on our lives this evening?’ Robbins looked angrily from one Russian to the other his hands in fists.

  ‘Anti European natives no doubt,’ Chevosky grunted before Plasov could reply.

  ‘They were European,’ Robbins jabbed with pointed fingers at the Bolos.

  Chevosky pondered for a moment. ‘Not according to my sources. We will look amongst the Sarts where we will find them. We will keep Colonel Edrich here whilst we determine exactly what your armies are doing on Russian territory. I will ensure that Colonel Edrich’s safety is at the top of my list. Colonel Edrich you must remain in the hotel. If you want to move to another hotel you must get my permission first. You may all go!’

  ‘You think Chevosky was behind this evening?’ Robbins asked in Edrich’s room as they all sat drinking vodka.

  Edrich pondered for a moment. ‘Yes. The gunman was definitely European. I cannot see the German POWs getting access to weapon like a Lewis Gun. Germans in the Bolo army could get one and I think I know why the attempt was made. If we had been shot, the Bolos could blame the German POWs led by Beckelmann. They could arrest Beckelmann and thereby entice, or press-gang, more Germans into their ranks.’

  ‘It’s called killing two birds with one stone,’ observed Hutton.

  ‘Good point,’ Edrich’s response was genuine. ‘I think that getting these Bolo blighters out of the government must be a key priority from now on. I wonder whether the Bolos are in the pay of the Germans and that when the time comes they’ll wave the green flag and allow the Hun to invade India. It would be nice to have some friends here once you have gone Compton is the only person left I trust. You realise that I may have to identify with any other anti-Bolos here,’ Edrich grimaced, ‘even possibly with Beckelmann.

  ‘Beckelmann! God forbid!’ Hutton’s look of horror made the others smile.

  The following morning Compton presented himself at the hotel to wish Robbins and Hutton goodbye. The goodbyes took place in the foyer of the hotel and took over an hour. It took over an hour because the police under Homburg hat searched all the baggage of the returnees shaking out clothes and generally made a mess that other hotel guests circumnavigated inevitably without a word or a second look at the mess except for one man who, for a few seconds, stood and looked at the shambles. The man was European and smartly dressed and when Edrich asked him who he was, the man shook his head and smiled.

  The four men watched the police complete their mischief and as Robbins and Hutton supervised the re-packing of their cases. Compton and Edrich discussed the latter’s plans.

  ‘I think Colonel Edrich,’ said Compton formally, ‘that this place no longer suits you. I have taken the liberty of finding out whether there are any available rooms for rent in the street where I am living. There are rooms in a house a few doors down from my house. You will obviously have to get permission from Commissar Chevosky, but I think you’ll get it because it eases their observations on the two of us living in adjacent properties. Also my physical and close-by presence may reduce any threat to you the Bolos might have up their sleeve. On your own here in the hotel is risky – there are too many rooms, corridors, stairs and people wandering in and out. The move may only be for a few days before they expel you, but I recommend you do it. Another advantage of my proposal is the daughter of this house speaks Persian, so she can help you with your Russian if that’s not too convoluted. How goes that by the way?’

  ‘My Persian’s not that great to begin with, so learning Russian that way might be interesting. I did think I understood about half of what Plasov’s said last night so with Bedi returning to Kashgar I was wondering who could give me lessons - is she attractive?’

  ‘Very.’

  Edrich smiled. ‘Sounds like it would be nice to be living close to you. So, I shall come and look at both woman and house and see if they are acceptable. If they are I’ll ask Plasov immediately if I can move,’ Edrich paused and looked at his countrymen as they in turn stood watching their Indian servants pack their baggage in a lorry. Edrich added with a shrug, ‘though whether I will be in Tashkent in the light of events further west for much longer I cannot say. I am, “a hostage to fortune,” without any doubt.’

  ‘The smartly dressed European you saw just now, I saw him last night in the restaurant. He says he is a Swiss German - I wonder. Whatever the man is doing here we must find out!’

  ‘How do you tell a Swiss German from a non-Swiss German?’ Edrich muttered.

  ‘Well as neither of us speaks German that will be difficult. If he is Swiss working for the Germans perhaps we get our governments to put on pressure Switzerland to stop him. When you have said your final goodbyes, come and see your prospective lodgings. After that we should play some whist.’ Edrich and Compton shook hands.

  ‘That sounds exciting. I will do that.’ Edrich watched Compton bid the other two Britons bon voyage before he disappeared down the street.

  A few minutes later Edrich shook hands with his mission companions and watched their car and baggage lorry pull away from the hotel followed by two cars packed with police. After the procession disappeared Edrich set off for Compton’s lodgings. Edrich had only gone a few yards when he glanced back to see if his police shadows were with him; they were. As he looked at his shadowers he saw something else that made him stop and return to the hotel.

  Edrich re-appeared a few minutes later with one of the hotel staff who carried a chair. The chair was quickly set down in the spot where Edrich had looked at his police escorts moments before. ‘Never draw a building straight on always draw it from an angle’ his teacher had told him. The way the light caught the building and the shadows it threw up just made Edrich want to draw it. Edrich had about half an hour and then the sun would have moved too much and made the shadows different. Quickly he began to sketch and wished that he had a camera to record the moment.

  About the author

  Simon is a Londoner by birth and now lives in Wales. He has always had strong ties to Wales through his Swansea born father.

  Simon has been interested in the First World War since childhood. To celebrate the centenary of the Great War the ‘Friends of the Imperial War Museum’ have held a competition for essays entitled, “What the First World War means to me”. Simon’s entry is attached and that gives some background to his interests.

  “The Cotton Spies” is his second novel and he intends to write a sequel.

  Other Writing

  Simon’s first book “Queen of Clubs” was published in 2011. The first chapter of “Queen of Clubs” is attached below. Queen of Clubs is available to buy as an ebook in a wide variety of formats from:-

  Amazon (Kindle), ISBN 978-0-9566391-2-7 (Mobi)

  Itunes, Barnes and Noble (Nook), Waterstones and W H Smith ISBN 978-0-9566391-3-4 (ePUB)

  Simon has tried his hand at writing TV, Film and Radio scripts without success.

  While he intends to write a sequel to the “Cotton Spies” he is currently beginning a book set in Wales during the 1960s.

  Queen of Clubs

  Dai Williams stopped walki
ng as soon as he saw the Glanddu village rugby clubhouse. He and his wife, Marilyn, had just been watching a TV series called, ‘The ugliest buildings in Britain.’ The eyesores displayed each week had fascinated them for the last six Wednesdays, and they were saddened that tonight’s episode was the last. What puzzled Dai was why the clubhouse before him had not been included in the TV series.

  Built on the cheap in the early 1960’s, the building had been designed by an architect who had fled Hungary in 1956 following that country’s abortive anti-Russian uprising. The clubhouse clearly reflected his training in the Stalinist school of the all-concrete, bombproof, anti-tank, blockhouse design.

  At the time they commissioned him the architect told the Glanddu Rugby Club’s Committee that concrete did not weather well in rain. Then he asked, ‘Does Carmarthenshire get much precipitation?’ Dai looked at the squat blob with its multitudinous, variously-sized, coloured stained patches and started to laugh.

  He said loudly as he continued on his path, ‘Does it rain much in Carmarthenshire? We have hard and soft rain, heavy and light rain, continuous and intermittent rain, solid and fine rain, blustery and driving rain; it drizzles, it pours, it rains cats and dogs, it rains stair rods, it buckets down; we get cloud bursts, we get thunder storms, we get deluges, we get downpours, we get squalls.’

  He stopped and thought for a moment. Perhaps squalls only occurred at sea. ‘Can’t use that, then,’ he muttered and decided to avoid any of the coarser expressions for rain just as a wasp flew at him at ankle height.

  Dai aimed a kick at the wasp that the latter easily sidestepped. He stood poised, ready to battle the insect if it counterattacked. The wasp hung mid-air, thinking. The local season for wasps to annoy and sting humans was not due to open until September first - several weeks hence. The wasp knew that if he broke the start date rule, a hideous punishment would ensue. The rumour in the nest was that errant wasps would be forced to attend all Glanddu Rugby Club’s home games.

  As a knowledgeable wasp explained, ‘Only queens survive the arrival of frost. Frosts might not occur here ‘til November. If one of us worker wasps is punished, that means seeing as many as six of Glanddu’s games. What right-minded wasp wants that to happen in the twilight of his life?’

  ‘Can’t they be stung into action?’

  ‘No, not the team,’ replied the knowledgeable wasp, ‘but get in amongst the game’s spectators and who knows?’

  The wasp had watched the team’s pre-season training as it foraged for food. Those few minutes had been enough to establish there was no way it wanted to see the team actually play. Keeping its sting firmly sheathed, the wasp abruptly flew off in search of early blackberries. Dai watched the wasp disappear and as he recommenced his walk, he broke into song: ‘When August showers, they come to Wales, they bring the rain clouds that pour for hours.’

  ‘Very musical, Dai, but the words could do with some work, a lot of work.’

  A voice sounded through the open window of the shed that stood at the end of the rugby pitch.

  ‘There’s something else. Stay there,’ commanded the voice.

  Dai stopped and waited for the voice’s owner, Tom Moses, to appear around the side of the shed, holding his dentures. When Tom emerged Dai was pleased that the man did not wipe his dentures on the oily rag he was carrying in his left hand.

  Tom just popped them in with his right before he sidled up to Dai and whispered, ‘I was watching on the driveway before you started singing.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘You were talking to yourself nineteen to the dozen. You know what they say. . .’ He tapped his temple with an index finger that left a black mark.

  Dai shrugged. ‘When people who lived in Glanddu worked at its coalmine, I saw my customers regularly. Nowadays everyone who has a job commutes to Cardiff, Swansea or Llanelli, so they all leave at the crack of dawn. Now if I want a chat I’ve got to provide both sides of the conversation.’ He sighed. ‘Commuting every day all the way to Cardiff — can you imagine doing that in your day, Tom?’

  ‘No. In the old days, to go to Cardiff took over two hours by bus and train.’

  Tom paused to spit, a habit from his days as a collier. That done, he remembered, ‘It was a big occasion to go there so we took sandwiches. Egg was always my favourite with great dollops of Welsh butter, none of this bloody margarine rubbish the wife tries to get me to eat. I tell her the dust will get me long before the cholesterol does.’ He spat again then grinned, ‘I’d usually eaten the lot before the train had left Swansea Station.’ He laughed, bringing on another coughing fit and a mouth wipe with the rag.

  Dai had no desire to go down memory lane any further. He started backing away but Tom grasped his arm and said eagerly, ‘Before you go, what do you think of the ground?’

  Dai stood and looked at the rugby pitch. The last time he had paid any attention to the field’s appearance was during the club’s final match of the season in April. At that time of the year, after eight months of non-stop rugby matches, the pitch reminded Dai of Swansea Bay after the tide went out. The difference was that where the rugby pitch had the odd tuft of grass, Swansea Bay had shoes, dead dogs and the occasional supermarket trolley scattered around its expanse.

  ‘It looks immaculate, Tom. The best I have ever seen it.’ He nodded his head pitch at the green sward before him. ‘It is a real credit to you and the boys of the Ground Committee.’

  For a few seconds there was silence as the two men stared at the pitch. Dai then added, ‘No doubt though, Tom, once the team has played a few games on it and we get our usual autumn rain, it will be the customary Flanders’ Fields boggy brown morass.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ said Tom with a shake of his head. ‘Yesterday the wireless said that because of this global warming we’re predicted to have an exceptionally dry winter. These meteorologists reckon that Wales may soon be a desert just like the Sahara.’

  ‘Really,’ Dai replied, trying not to smile.

  ‘Yes. When that happens, we’ll definitely need to have a sprinkler system to get the grass to grow.’

  Dai put his arm round the old man. ‘If this place ends up like the Sahara it will be long after you and I have gone. Let us leave it to our grandchildren to decide on the sprinklers. In the meantime I take my hat off to you gardeners because you certainly know how to get the best looking rugby pitch in Wales.’

  Tom looked at Dai quizzically. ‘Well, the club owns the pitch so we have a duty to look after it.’

  He frowned then after a moment shook his head, ‘Dai, this is not gardening. Gardening is when the wife says, “I want a new border, or I want to move this plant or that plant.” Then gardening is non-stop digging. Then, there are the visits to these mega-sized Gardening Centres that sell never-ending new and costly varieties of plants that the missus wants. Down here,’ his arm swept across the pitch, ‘we don’t have to worry whether this colour flower goes with that colour flower, or this flower contrasts too strongly with the colour on the clubhouse windows.’

  He spat again, ‘Admittedly some weeds like plantains grow on the ground. But, unlike at home, we don’t need to bother about them.’

  Suddenly, Tom’s voice took on a preacher’s timbre. ‘Being here on the pitch is all about peace, tranquillity and getting away from the wife. Our only problems are to decide whose turn is it to sit on the tractor or whose turn it is to bring the milk for the tea.’ Tom winked, ‘Because I’m the chairman I get to drive the tractor more than most.’

  ‘What about them?’ Dai thrust a thumb at the pitch. ‘The Ground Sub-committee Chairman’s job is to remove them. Or do you assign one of your minions to do it?’

  Without a word, Tom’s face changed to thunder. He placed his hands firmly on his hips, breathed out audibly, spat viciously and without a word to Dai, he strode out onto the pitch and began to clap his hands loudly. The pigeon flock slowly roused itself before it flew off towards the far end of the ground. Then it circled back and deposited its members a few feet from where
they had just been grazing. Dai watched Tom walk further onto the pitch and clap his hands for a second time with exactly the same response as before. Tom turned and looked at Dai in exasperation, shaking his fist before beginning a determined march towards the birds, clapping and swearing.

  Tom’ dentures were not the best so as Dai continued his walk towards the clubhouse, he was unsure — as were the pigeons, no doubt — whether Tom’s expletives were in English or Welsh or both.

  As Dai neared the clubhouse, he heard a car approaching from behind and without looking he waved, knowing it would be someone he knew. The car sounded its horn in acknowledgement, as it overtook him and parked. The driver got out and then retrieved a briefcase from the backseat. Ramrod straight as always, the driver marched towards the clubhouse entrance where Dai stood waiting, holding the door open.

  ‘Thank you and good evening, David,’ said the driver, who was the only person, other than his wife when she was angry, who ever used his full name.

  ‘Glad I’ve caught you. Toby is coming down this weekend with his girlfriend, so may I have an extra two pints on Friday and two on Saturday, please.’

  Over thirty years in the milk delivery business had honed Dai’s mental filing system and already he had opened his mental order book: G Bowen Thomas, Hillcrest.

  ‘The usual - skimmed for her and full fat for him?’

  ‘Yes, thanks. A supermarket wouldn’t remember my requirements, would they, David?’

  ‘No, they certainly would not,’ barked Dai as he followed Mrs Gloria Bowen Thomas, chairwoman of Glanddu Rugby Club, into the clubhouse.

  What the First World War means to me.

  My submitted entry to the Friends of the Imperial War Museum competition 2014

  I read “Our Island Story,” by H E Marshall, when I was about ten years old and began a lifelong love of history and books. Unsurprisingly, history became my best academic subject and within that subject one topic chose me: the First World War (WW1). My interest in WW1 developed whilst listening to my parents’ childhood memories and seeing limbless men begging in London’s streets. Throughout my life I have read as many histories, biographies and autobiographies of the conflict that I could buy or borrow from my public library. Because this war was fought worldwide there was always something new to discover, particularly once I started researching in the India Office Library and the Imperial War Museum. The conflict even inspired me to write a novel and a radio drama. Trips to the battlefields gave me perspective and one such trip inadvertently brought me happiness of a different kind.

  In late September 1951 I went to a new school by bus travelling past the Cenotaph in Whitehall. In the early 1950s nearly everyone wore a hat and on passing the Cenotaph doffed their headwear. I had to change buses just to the west of the Cenotaph where an old man stood next to the bus stop selling matches out of a tray and beside him, begging, stood a man without an arm. I asked my father who the men were and he replied, “Soldiers from the First World War.” When I arrived at school we congregated in a Hall that contained the portrait of six former pupils who had won the Victoria Cross in the WW1: five soldiers and the captain of a “Q” ship. So despite being born during the Second World War, seeing bombsites everywhere in London, I knew about the earlier conflict at nine years of age.

  During the Second World War nobody in my family was killed. Father was a police sergeant at Bow Street police station, one of his brothers, Joe, lost a leg in the battle for France in 1940, and his other two brothers were in the Royal Navy – Jack was sunk at least twice and Stanley was torpedoed on the Murmansk run. This was in contrast to my father’s family fortunes in the WW1. In November 1916 my grandmother’s youngest brother, Stanley Griffiths, a private in the Welsh Regiment, died of his wounds in Swansea after fighting on the Somme. My father, then aged 8, was taken to see his uncle lying in his coffin. When my grandmother saw her brother she said, “I’m going to name the child I am carrying after my brother, if it’s a boy,” and so my uncle was named “Stanley”. Earlier in 1916 my father remembered meeting his mother’s eldest brother, David Griffiths, wearing the blue uniform of a wounded soldier; he’d had a toe shot off in 1915. On 1st July 1916 David, serving in the 2nd Devonshire Regiment, “went over the top,” never to be seen again.

  My mother’s family were Londoners and in 1952 my maternal grandfather took my elder sister and me on a visit to Highgate where he was born. Whilst there, we bumped into granddad’s youngest brother, Harry, who had won the Conspicuous Gallantry Medal while serving in the Post Office Rifles as a sergeant. Sadly, I do not remember the meeting but according to my sister the two brothers hardly exchanged a word – both displaying the warmth so typical of that side of the family. My mother remembered that when the Zeppelins came over London in 1918 and the anti-aircraft guns fired, she and her nine siblings hid under the family piano. How they did they all fit?

  My father joined the Metropolitan Police in 1929 beginning at Tottenham Court Road Police Station. Many of the men my father served with had survived the trenches. My father, keen to get promotion, was zealous in his duties but he always commented with a smile that the trench survivors he served with were completely different. He said these ex-soldiers were never fazed by anything or anybody, including the strict army discipline espoused by their unpleasant superiors. Apparently these ex-soldiers would stroll benignly around their “beats” with never a care in the world, and never seemed to arrest anybody. When one of these men, Jack Audley, arrested a well known criminal, Rubberbones Johnson, who was waiting in a bus queue, everyone at the station was agog. Johnson had had plastic surgery and looked completely different from his wanted poster. “My powers of observation, honed in the army, came into play,” explained Jack to the amazed station. Amazement faded when it was learnt that a school fellow of Johnson’s had pointed him out to Jack who just happened to be standing day-dreaming near the bus stop.

  In the early 1930s my father, injured playing rugby, was waiting outside the police doctor’s office to see whether he was fit for duty. Also waiting apprehensively for the doctor was a policeman who had fought in the trenches. The ex-soldier’s health was being reviewed because he had been off sick three times in the year with chest complaints, and three sick absences were the maximum allowed within a year by the police. Ten years police service earned a small pension and this policeman had served for a few months short of ten years. His chest complaint related directly to his being gassed in the trenches, but he was thrown out of the service that day.

  My mother, an avid reader of fiction, possessed only one non-fiction book: R H Kiernan’s biography of TE Lawrence. This was the first adult history book I read, aged about twelve. The book aroused my interest in Lawrence so that whenever a new biography is written about him, I have to read it! About the same time I discovered in a cupboard a collection of the 1930s magazine, “I Was There.” That magazine’s articles were written by veterans about their experiences on air, land and sea during WW1. Its photographs of the Western Front particularly shocked me to see men living in such conditions. Reading the complete collection of the magazine cemented my interest in WW1, but I needed something more substantial.

  My local library, Holborn, had a policy that people under 16 could not take out adult books. My father rarely read books and never visited the library so I got him to join it. I then used father’s adult tickets to read all the WW1 books in Holborn Library. Mostly they were the British and Australian Official Histories of the War - not the most excitingly written tomes for someone of twelve or thirteen. But it was a start. Once I started earning a living I began to build my library of books without a thought as to where to put them (still a problem over fifty years later). I usually bought books but once when I was a Polytechnic Computing Lecturer I did some private computing work for a publisher who paid me with four WW1 books.

  At first my interest was only in the Western Front but I keep discovering new aspects about the war that have seized my a
ttention. I visited Vienna in 2012 and found “Armenia 1915,” a locally published book in English. This book describes how the Ottoman Empire was enacting ethnic cleansing against the Armenians in 1915. The Armenians appealed to the Ottoman Empire’s Christian Allies for help. Germany ignored the appeal whilst the Austro-Hungarians tried to help the Armenians, but they were too weak to achieve anything. In December 2013 I finished reading Edwin Hoyt’s book, “The Army Without A Country,” that describes how the Czech army fought its way round Russia 1918 -1920 in its effort to secure Czech independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In January 2014 I have begun to read, “When the United States Invaded Russia,” which is the story of the US and Allied Intervention in Siberia. Once I have finished that book then I will read the new biography of President Woodrow Wilson. The subject just seems to grow.

  In 1985 the last official history of the Great War was published: “Operations in Persia 1914 to 1919.” What puzzled me was the date “1919.” I was always led to believe that the war finished in November 1918. I began an investigation into the whys and wherefores of a part of the war that I never known anything about, the British involvement in Persia and Central Asia, and why that involvement lasted into 1919. My research began in the files of the India Office, the Army library, the Imperial War Museum library, and the National Archives. Books, of which there were surprisingly few, led me to understand that British policy perhaps was not contradictory but merely that the right-hand and the left-hand had absolutely no clue what each was doing. I made notes of my research initially thinking I might write a history book but changed my mind and decided to write a novel based on the events that occurred in Central Asia during the spring and summer of 1918.

  The arrival of the internet has had a positive impact on my research. I have been able to find historical papers and writings by historians on websites. I can more easily find books on websites to buy, particularly those which are out of print or are published by specialist publishers and which are not often stocked in bookshop chains.

  Over the last thirty years I have written novels and scripts for film, TV and radio. The first thing that I wrote was triggered after I read a book on the cricket matches played between England and the visiting Australian in 1921. This book mentioned that one of the England players, AJ Evans, had written a book called, “The Escaping Club”. After a long search I found a copy of the book which describes ex-RFC pilot Major Evans’ capture and escape from both Germans and Turks. I decided to write a Radio Drama based on A J Evans’ exploits as a WW1 Prisoner–Of-War (POW) and as an England cricketer in 1921. As the Australian cricketers visit the UK every four years I wanted to time the series to coincide with the next tour by the Australians. Whilst Evans’ book was the basis for the series I needed more detailed information. My investigation took me to the IWM library’s collection of POW reminiscences and letters home (none were from Evans). The collection described how, for example, money, maps and wire-cutters were smuggled to the POWs by their mothers. During the Second World War POWs were helped by a specific organisation, MI9, to which Evans belonged. Evans used his experiences to advise how MI9 could help POWs in their life “behind the wire.” Evans also lectured Allied airmen on what to do to evade capture if they were shot down. The first episode of my series described Evans flying over German lines in 1916 under shell-fire, then batting helmetless in 1921 against the Australian fast bowlers, Gregory and MacDonald, whizzing a cricket ball past his nose at about ninety miles an hour. Unfortunately, the BBC rejected my scripts and when I rewrote them as a film script a film producer did the same.

  By the early 1990s my historical attention switched wholeheartedly to British involvement in Central Asia in 1918 and I spent Saturday mornings at the India Office library near Waterloo Station investigating official correspondence and the secret papers of men like FM Bailey and R. Teague-Jones. In 2001 I retired and as more books on the subject were being published and the internet had arrived, I decided to use my imagination and write a novel rather than a history book. I abandoned this novel, “The Cotton Spies,” in 2006 to write a sports novel that I self-published in 2011. In June 2013 I began to write a new sports novel but stopped when I realised that I had put too much effort into the “The Cotton Spies” to let it languish. Since June I have been re-writing and editing the novel which I will publish as a free e-book in 2014.

  I took my parents to the WW1 battlefields in 1985 as a golden wedding anniversary present. My father was moved to see his uncle’s name commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing. My next trip to the battlefields in September 1988 was with a friend, Winston. My journey started with a chance encounter with an American woman on Reading Station. The encounter lasted barely half an hour but led to our marriage the following August. That pleasant interlude was not followed by good weather for the trip to the battlefields. After a dreadful crossing of the Channel, which saw me violently seasick, we spent three days in cold, damp, misty weather. It was Winston’s first trip to the battlefields and he had researched what to see. We stood on Passchendaele ridge. Despite patches of mist, the view to the plain below was amazingly clear. It was no surprise that the Germans could see the Allies’ troop movements; they could probably spot a field-mouse foraging for food. In drizzle we stood by Essex Farm Cemetery where Lieutenant Colonel McRae, wrote his poem, “In Flanders Fields,” following the death of a comrade. We stood at Hyde Park Corner Cemetery by the grave of one of England’s greatest rugby players, Ronnie (Poulton) Palmer.

  In August 2013 my cousin in New Zealand found and sent me a copy of a photograph of my two great uncles killed in 1916. Contact with another cousin turned up a torn newspaper notice of my Great Uncle Stanley Griffith’s funeral and where in Swansea he was buried. Now in 2014 I will visit his grave for the first time because he was family and a reminder of how much the WW1 has meant to me.

  We must commemorate that the war brought independence to many countries including Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuanian, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. We must commemorate the war for the monumental changes it brought to British Society. First, it gave women them the chance to show they could perform work that was once deemed the prerogative of men. Second, the rigid pre-war class structure was dealt a blow because living in the trenches forced men from all levels to tolerate and understand each other. Finally, we need to commemorate the sheer numbers of men who fought and died as well as those who survived or were maimed in the hope future generations will learn enough not to blunder into what some called this war: “Armageddon”.