Ferme Bellengez, Grandcourt, 1st April 1996
A day touring British and Commonwealth World War 1 cemeteries: Serre Road Nos 1 and 2 (9,553 burials); Ovillers-la-Boiselle (3,440); Gordon Dump (1,680, including a lone Sikh from Hodgson’s Horse); Redan Ridge Nos1, 2 and 3 (483, ‘God touched him with His finger and he slept.’ a dedication at No. 3); and Beaumont Hamel (179). A tiny fraction of the total dead; and of these a half are ‘known only to God’.
As if obeying an April 1st order, the gardeners were out in the cemetreies, cutting, trimming and tidying with precision and care around the simple white Portland limestone headstones. The layout and materials combine to give these resting places an open lightness in the bright spring sun. In the German cemetery at Fricourt (17,027 burials) workers cleared the grass around the iron crosses with strimmers. The crosses are inscribed with two names on each side; arrayed under trees, they stand in the same dark ambience as at Langemark.
Coach parties of school children doing the Somme half reluctantly, half curiously, stood looking into the Lochnagar Crater trying to imagine the chaos created by detonating 27,000 kg) of ammonal.
Skylarks sang high over wide open fields spreading to far horizons, the valleys pricked by church spires. A flock of fieldfares dipping and chattering headed north. Great tractors hauled disc harrows across the chalky hills raising swirls of dust in the bitter wind. A neat and tidy country. The chaos that reigned there eighty years ago is unimaginable and soon will pass from living memory