11. 11. 11. 11.

This shot was taken in a random, small village I happened to be driving through, in the heart of rural England on a very grey, foggy day.

I pulled over and paused for a moment by the war memorial. At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 2011, I took time to think of the uncle I never knew.

As a rear gunner in the air force his plane came down over northern France on his very first mission in May 1943.

My mother was the one who, at the age of 20, had to break the news of her older brother's death to her own mother, who was in hospital with terminal cancer at the time. My grandmother died six weeks later.

Shortly after the war, mum made the journey to Brittany to visit her brother's grave which was in a small village, perhaps very similar to the one I stopped in today.

Mum tells how the final leg of her journey was by bicycle lent to her by the local train station master. When she stopped a man in the village to ask for directions, it transpired he was one of the men that had buried her brother, and he accompanied her to the grave.
She describes her journey so vividly, that I'm sure she could find her way there today.

Later, his remains were moved to a large war grave, but she likes to think of him still in that small village, where he would have felt so at home.

Reading the names on any village memorial, reminds us how every part of our country has been affected by war, and how, sadly, that continues today.

I always think this poem 'The Soldier' by Rupert Brooke, could have been written for my Uncle Thomas, or equally, any other young person who gave their life so we could live in freedom.


If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by the suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.