Buried near here

July 1st, and everyone is thinking back to the Somme and I am sitting on my garden bench thinking "this is what they left, what they lost".

A few yards away from where I took this photo, they buried a car. It was a 1913 Sunbeam which a father bought for his only son, James Lawrie Johnstone. James went away to war, fought at the Somme, was awarded the MC but died of wounds from High Wood in August 1916, aged 21.
His bereaved father drove the Sunbeam but after a near-fatal accident his wife decided that the car should be destroyed.They tried to burn it, but eventually it was buried by estate workers in what is now our garden.
Here it lay until 1971, when the orchard was turned into a market garden and the plough kept scraping against a large metallic object. The Sunbeam was hauled out and later transformed into a replica of a 1912 Coupe de L'Auto racing car. Sadly the new owner, like the car's first, died young. It is now in a motor museum somewhere in Scotland. An article about it appeared in the Scots magazine in 1986, where it was called "The Sunbeam that returned from the grave".

....and now for something completely different...Sarah is going see Benji Tranter at the Hill Station tonight and this is the song of his she likes best!