Oxford Rambles

Ashmolean Museum

Just 18 Miles from our modest hovel lies the city of the "Dreaming Spires", the historic University City of Oxford. The City is famous the world over for its University and place in history. For over 800 years, it has been a home to royalty and scholars, and since the 9th century an established town, although people are known to have lived in the area for thousands of years. So, last Saturday suffering from post election blues and with a meeting in Oxford we headed over for a ramble amongst Academiae Oxoniensia with a visit to the fascinating Museum of Science, a ramble through the lively covered market (an antidote to clone town British High Streets) and a browse and some judicious purchases in Blackwell’s specialist music shop. Then to cap it all over to Jericho for Dinner with friends in the ever reliable Bistro Blanc, the Brasserie chain named after the two Michelin Star French Chef, Raymond Blanc who describes it thus;





“Oxford was my first love, close to the Manoir in a town that I now call home. Two houses in the Jericho area of the city formed the base for the building of what was then called Petit Blanc. Not a classical Brasserie in the true sense of the word, it is split into two main rooms and a small private dining room. This gives it an intimate and bubbly atmosphere. The first room has light from three sides, bathing diners throughout the day whilst the back room has a view on my little garden. This Garden Room is available for private hire and can accommodate up to 110 guests. The small Salon Prive holds about 12 people and it pleases me to see it often used for family celebrations, the noise spilling out into the main restaurant. Most Sundays I have lunch here, chez moi.”

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/12/brasserie-blanc.html

I enjoyed an excellent feastie @ Bistro Blanc where everything was just right. To start I had a Leek & potato soup followed by grilled Ocean Perch with prawn potatoes and rosemary butter. All this was then capped by a Kirsch Savarin with poached red fruits and crème fraiche and washed down with an excellent glass of Domaine de la Provequiere VDP Sauvignon Blanc.



This is the “Lunch with wine” menu which is available for £14.95 for three courses and a glass of wine not just at lunchtime but (as for us) in the early evening from 5.30 to 7.30. At this price for this standard of cooking and surroundings it is a rather attractive deal, n’est pas?


Fishmonger in the Covered Market

Oxford is the oldest university in the English-speaking world and lays claim to nine centuries of continuous existence. As an internationally renowned centre for teaching and research, Oxford attracts students and scholars from across the globe, with almost a quarter of the students from overseas. More than 130 nationalities are represented among a student population of over 18,000. Oxford is a collegiate university, with 39 self-governing colleges related to the University in a type of federal system. There are also seven Permanent Private Halls, founded by different Christian denominations. Thirty colleges and all halls admit students for both undergraduate and graduate degrees. Seven other colleges are for graduates only; one has Fellows only, and one specializes in part-time and continuing education. Here is how to tour Oxford in a day whilst avoiding the usual tourist traps on DC’s famous ROT* (* Reduced Oxford Tour)

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/04/day-in-oxford.html


Sheldonian Theatre

The colleges function more like halls of residence than educational institutions in their own right. Students’ social lives revolve around the colleges in which they are enrolled, but teaching is often organised university-wide. The practical result is a city-wide campus that requires one to watch out for student bikers whizzing by on their way to lectures or classes at different colleges. Also, there seems to be a certain cachet to having the oldest and squeakiest bike possible, and bicycle helmets are unheard of.


The Tower of Magdalen College where at dawn on the 1st May the Choiristers ascend to the top and sing Matins to welcome the summer.

With so much learning going on Oxford contains many homes to the Muses or Museums to give them their more familiar title. There is the Pitts River Museum, The Museum of Oxford, The Museum of the History of Science, The Bates Collection of Musical Instruments, The Christchurch Picture Gallery and The Oxford Museum of Natural History. Oxford's museums and collections are world renowned. They provide an important resource for scholars around the world, and welcome visits from members of the public. More than a million people visit the University’s museums and collections every year. For me from all this abundance of riches one of my favourite places to visit is what has been the somewhat forbidding and eccentric Ashmolean Museum. So we did again today for tea before heading to the original building in High Street beside the Sheldonian Theatre .



http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/11/oxfords-ashmolean-museum.html



On this Saturday there was a graduation (or conferring in Oxford Speak) at the Sheldonian and in the Oxford tradition the gown draped students walk (process, in Oxford Speak) from their College with their tutors to receive their degrees after which they can wear the mortar board hats which denote they are graduates. The graduation ceremonies are from each college so they tend to be small scale with the students and families and friends dressed up to the nines for this happy occasion. Oxford is hugely competitive to get into and there is a considerable sense of achievement on these occasions, a contrast to Britain’s worst University in Wolverhampton.


Off to Conferring


Back from Conferring

Here are some shots and reflections on Oxford in the busy run up to Xmas where the streets are more lively than normal with entertainers and evangelists!

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/12/xmas-is-coming.html



The proposition of setting a mathematical thriller in Oxford is interesting and has some previous form. A mathematician and Divine of Christchurch College Oxford, Charles Dodgson published Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 1865, under the pen-name Dodgson had first used some nine years earlier -- Lewis Carroll. The texts of Lewis Carroll’s works are littered with mathematics and probability even if Alice gets some of it wrong!



http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/05/oxford-murders.html

On the way back after our early dinner at Bistro Blanc we stopped off at the wonderful Notley Abbey near Thame where the actors Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh spent their happiest years. It still entices with its wonderful languorous and secluded setting surrounded by branches and pools of the River Thame which first enticed monks to build their abbey here in the 12th Century. Vivien & Larry first saw the Abbey in 1943.



It was overgrown and in desperate need of restoration. Larry instantly fell in love with it, especially since he found out that it had been endowed by Henry V. Vivien was sceptical and considered it hopeless. Much of the home could not be viewed from inside because ceilings were caving, floors rotting, and pipes were broken. Nevertheless, the Olivier’s purchased it in February 1945 and immediately began work on it. Vivien, too, soon fell in love with the Abbey. They put all their savings into repairing the Abbey. They focused on the large hall, study, 3 reception rooms, and bedrooms. With the help of decorators Sybil Colfax and John Fowler, Vivien put her personal touch in each room of Notley. Regency stripes were used and large pieces of furniture and artwork were chosen.






Notley Abbey

"I will have everything that I want at Notley – as well as my husband” Vivien Leigh once said.

"Of all the houses I've lived in over the years, Notley is my favourite. It was absolutely enchanting, and it enchanted me. At Notley I had an affair with the past. For me it had mesmeric power; I could easily drown in its atmosphere. I could not leave it alone, I was a child lost in its history. Perhaps I loved it too much, if that is possible." - Laurence Olivier in Confessions of an Actor




Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh at Notley Abbey

Everybody who was anybody in the world of Stage and Screen in the 1950s made their way to Notley where the Oliviers were famed for their hospitality.


The Oxford made Mini in cake in the Covered Market

Home tired yet refreshed. Oxford still casts its spell and seems a unique place in this world. A busy town, a wealthy town whose house prices match London, a working town where the tradition of motor car manufacture pioneered by Morris Garages (MG) is kept alive at the Mini Plant at Cowley. But it is a City with a different demographic, where you can wander through the world’s biggest university bookshop, wander among its 39 Colleges and its Halls with associated libraries, laboratories and playing fields. It is an International City with students, staff, researchers and tourists from across the globe. A cultured city where you can go to six museums or at least 10 classical concerts on any given day.


Situated in Cornmarket is the oldest building in Oxford, dating from 1040. The tower of St Michael at the Northgate is Saxon in origin.

But for all that it is a quintessentially English City with at its heart a Saxon Tower over a thousand years old and where one of its best known writers was a J.R. Tolkien who was a Professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University. The Anglo-Saxons were the people who ruled England for 600 years, forming the basis of its culture, language and borders and who gave it its name.




Black Tulip at the Ashmolean

The writer Matthew Arnold summed up Oxford’s special sense of place best;

Humid the air! leafless, yet soft as spring,
The tender purple spray on copse and briers!
And that sweet city with her dreaming spires,
She needs not June for beauty's heightening

- Matthew Arnold


All Souls College

Oxford Rambles

Ashmolean Museum

Just 18 Miles from our modest hovel lies the city of the "Dreaming Spires", the historic University City of Oxford. The City is famous the world over for its University and place in history. For over 800 years, it has been a home to royalty and scholars, and since the 9th century an established town, although people are known to have lived in the area for thousands of years. So, last Saturday suffering from post election blues and with a meeting in Oxford we headed over for a ramble amongst Academiae Oxoniensia with a visit to the fascinating Museum of Science, a ramble through the lively covered market (an antidote to clone town British High Streets) and a browse and some judicious purchases in Blackwell’s specialist music shop. Then to cap it all over to Jericho for Dinner with friends in the ever reliable Bistro Blanc, the Brasserie chain named after the two Michelin Star French Chef, Raymond Blanc who describes it thus;





“Oxford was my first love, close to the Manoir in a town that I now call home. Two houses in the Jericho area of the city formed the base for the building of what was then called Petit Blanc. Not a classical Brasserie in the true sense of the word, it is split into two main rooms and a small private dining room. This gives it an intimate and bubbly atmosphere. The first room has light from three sides, bathing diners throughout the day whilst the back room has a view on my little garden. This Garden Room is available for private hire and can accommodate up to 110 guests. The small Salon Prive holds about 12 people and it pleases me to see it often used for family celebrations, the noise spilling out into the main restaurant. Most Sundays I have lunch here, chez moi.”

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/12/brasserie-blanc.html

I enjoyed an excellent feastie @ Bistro Blanc where everything was just right. To start I had a Leek & potato soup followed by grilled Ocean Perch with prawn potatoes and rosemary butter. All this was then capped by a Kirsch Savarin with poached red fruits and crème fraiche and washed down with an excellent glass of Domaine de la Provequiere VDP Sauvignon Blanc.



This is the “Lunch with wine” menu which is available for £14.95 for three courses and a glass of wine not just at lunchtime but (as for us) in the early evening from 5.30 to 7.30. At this price for this standard of cooking and surroundings it is a rather attractive deal, n’est pas?


Fishmonger in the Covered Market

Oxford is the oldest university in the English-speaking world and lays claim to nine centuries of continuous existence. As an internationally renowned centre for teaching and research, Oxford attracts students and scholars from across the globe, with almost a quarter of the students from overseas. More than 130 nationalities are represented among a student population of over 18,000. Oxford is a collegiate university, with 39 self-governing colleges related to the University in a type of federal system. There are also seven Permanent Private Halls, founded by different Christian denominations. Thirty colleges and all halls admit students for both undergraduate and graduate degrees. Seven other colleges are for graduates only; one has Fellows only, and one specializes in part-time and continuing education. Here is how to tour Oxford in a day whilst avoiding the usual tourist traps on DC’s famous ROT* (* Reduced Oxford Tour)

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/04/day-in-oxford.html


Sheldonian Theatre

The colleges function more like halls of residence than educational institutions in their own right. Students’ social lives revolve around the colleges in which they are enrolled, but teaching is often organised university-wide. The practical result is a city-wide campus that requires one to watch out for student bikers whizzing by on their way to lectures or classes at different colleges. Also, there seems to be a certain cachet to having the oldest and squeakiest bike possible, and bicycle helmets are unheard of.


The Tower of Magdalen College where at dawn on the 1st May the Choiristers ascend to the top and sing Matins to welcome the summer.

With so much learning going on Oxford contains many homes to the Muses or Museums to give them their more familiar title. There is the Pitts River Museum, The Museum of Oxford, The Museum of the History of Science, The Bates Collection of Musical Instruments, The Christchurch Picture Gallery and The Oxford Museum of Natural History. Oxford's museums and collections are world renowned. They provide an important resource for scholars around the world, and welcome visits from members of the public. More than a million people visit the University’s museums and collections every year. For me from all this abundance of riches one of my favourite places to visit is what has been the somewhat forbidding and eccentric Ashmolean Museum. So we did again today for tea before heading to the original building in High Street beside the Sheldonian Theatre .



http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/11/oxfords-ashmolean-museum.html



On this Saturday there was a graduation (or conferring in Oxford Speak) at the Sheldonian and in the Oxford tradition the gown draped students walk (process, in Oxford Speak) from their College with their tutors to receive their degrees after which they can wear the mortar board hats which denote they are graduates. The graduation ceremonies are from each college so they tend to be small scale with the students and families and friends dressed up to the nines for this happy occasion. Oxford is hugely competitive to get into and there is a considerable sense of achievement on these occasions, a contrast to Britain’s worst University in Wolverhampton.


Off to Conferring


Back from Conferring

Here are some shots and reflections on Oxford in the busy run up to Xmas where the streets are more lively than normal with entertainers and evangelists!

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/12/xmas-is-coming.html



The proposition of setting a mathematical thriller in Oxford is interesting and has some previous form. A mathematician and Divine of Christchurch College Oxford, Charles Dodgson published Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 1865, under the pen-name Dodgson had first used some nine years earlier -- Lewis Carroll. The texts of Lewis Carroll’s works are littered with mathematics and probability even if Alice gets some of it wrong!



http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/05/oxford-murders.html

On the way back after our early dinner at Bistro Blanc we stopped off at the wonderful Notley Abbey near Thame where the actors Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh spent their happiest years. It still entices with its wonderful languorous and secluded setting surrounded by branches and pools of the River Thame which first enticed monks to build their abbey here in the 12th Century. Vivien & Larry first saw the Abbey in 1943.



It was overgrown and in desperate need of restoration. Larry instantly fell in love with it, especially since he found out that it had been endowed by Henry V. Vivien was sceptical and considered it hopeless. Much of the home could not be viewed from inside because ceilings were caving, floors rotting, and pipes were broken. Nevertheless, the Olivier’s purchased it in February 1945 and immediately began work on it. Vivien, too, soon fell in love with the Abbey. They put all their savings into repairing the Abbey. They focused on the large hall, study, 3 reception rooms, and bedrooms. With the help of decorators Sybil Colfax and John Fowler, Vivien put her personal touch in each room of Notley. Regency stripes were used and large pieces of furniture and artwork were chosen.






Notley Abbey

"I will have everything that I want at Notley – as well as my husband” Vivien Leigh once said.

"Of all the houses I've lived in over the years, Notley is my favourite. It was absolutely enchanting, and it enchanted me. At Notley I had an affair with the past. For me it had mesmeric power; I could easily drown in its atmosphere. I could not leave it alone, I was a child lost in its history. Perhaps I loved it too much, if that is possible." - Laurence Olivier in Confessions of an Actor




Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh at Notley Abbey

Everybody who was anybody in the world of Stage and Screen in the 1950s made their way to Notley where the Oliviers were famed for their hospitality.


The Oxford made Mini in cake in the Covered Market

Home tired yet refreshed. Oxford still casts its spell and seems a unique place in this world. A busy town, a wealthy town whose house prices match London, a working town where the tradition of motor car manufacture pioneered by Morris Garages (MG) is kept alive at the Mini Plant at Cowley. But it is a City with a different demographic, where you can wander through the world’s biggest university bookshop, wander among its 39 Colleges and its Halls with associated libraries, laboratories and playing fields. It is an International City with students, staff, researchers and tourists from across the globe. A cultured city where you can go to six museums or at least 10 classical concerts on any given day.


Situated in Cornmarket is the oldest building in Oxford, dating from 1040. The tower of St Michael at the Northgate is Saxon in origin.

But for all that it is a quintessentially English City with at its heart a Saxon Tower over a thousand years old and where one of its best known writers was a J.R. Tolkien who was a Professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University. The Anglo-Saxons were the people who ruled England for 600 years, forming the basis of its culture, language and borders and who gave it its name.




Black Tulip at the Ashmolean

The writer Matthew Arnold summed up Oxford’s special sense of place best;

Humid the air! leafless, yet soft as spring,
The tender purple spray on copse and briers!
And that sweet city with her dreaming spires,
She needs not June for beauty's heightening

- Matthew Arnold


All Souls College

Armistice Day 2009 - End of a generation

The passing of the First World War generation was marked by a special memorial service at Westminster Abbey today as millions of people across Britain and Europe observed the two-minute Armistice Day silence.

Ninety-one years after the guns fell silent at 11am on 11th November, 1918, the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh joined Gordon Brown, senior politicians and the heads of the armed forces in the solemn ceremony which commemorated the passing of the final three veterans of the war living in Britain, who all died this year. William Stone died in January, aged 108, followed in July by Henry Allingham, 113, and Harry Patch, 111. The only remaining British-born survivor of the war, former seaman Claude Choules, who is 108 now lives in Australia.


Poppies in the fountains at Trafalgar Square

Few can have been unmoved by the poignant sight at the last commemoration at the Cenotaph in Whitehall, London of these last surviving veterans of the First World War joining serving soldiers in current conflicts to mark the 90th anniversary of the day peace returned to Europe. Then Henry Allingham, Harry Patch and Bill Stone led the nation as it remembered the sacrifices made by the 1914-1918 generation. They each represented the armed service they belonged to - for Mr Allingham the Royal Air Force, Mr Patch the Army and Mr Stone the Royal Navy. All three men laid wreaths at the Cenotaph in central London to commemorate Armistice Day. Sadly, but not too surprisingly, all have now died since that ceremony.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/07/farewell-old-soldiers.html


Henry Allingham, Harry Patch and Bill Stone

Being in Westminster and not too far from the Abbey which was the venue for the ceremonies you notice the minutiae of these occasions, the police checking lampposts and sealing manhole covers before hand, the veterans with their medals heading to the ceremony, the Guards colour party in great coats and bearskins marching briskly along the footpath from Wellington Barracks, the ambassador’s cars with their flags going down Toothill Street and the boom of the field in Green Park announcing at 11 the beginning of the silence and two minutes later the boom announcing it ending. Why Gordon Brown’s car passed along Petty France this morning on his way to the Abbey taking a different route from the back of Downing Street to the front of the Abbey. As is the way here these ceremonies are well oiled and practiced with no need for self important motorcades or grandiosity. Wars are and, we sometimes forget, have always been controversial but the orchestrated personal attacks on Gordon Brown by Rupert Murdoch and the tatty Sun “newspaper” represents a new low by the Dirty Digger and his hired help who arrogantly feel they can manipulate the British Public and British Democracy.


Theipval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme

But none of this controversy about current military engagements should in any way to detract from the personal heroism or sacrifice of soldiers in battle and it is right that their bravery is commemorated each year on Armistice Sunday, the service held on the Sunday closest to Armistice Day, the anniversary of the end of the fighting in World War 1 at 11.00 am on the 11th November 1918. Indeed when you read the obituaries of those who served in the wars and the enormous responsibilities and decisions they had to undertake at a tender age you somehow feel that those of us whose lives have not been tempered by war have somehow led shallow lives by contrast. However we largely read about those who survive, not those who perished.

This was brought home to me some years ago when I made a personal journey to the battle fields for there were deaths on both sides of my family in the First World War. My wife’s great uncle Edward Kenny who died with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders in the Battle of the Somme in 1916 and my Great Uncle, James McMahon who died with the Royal Dublin Fusiliers at Beaurevoir in the Ainse 5 weeks before the end of the war in 1918.


Private Edward Kenny

Private Edward Kenny, originally from Edenderry, Co. Offaly had fallen with the 2nd. Bn. Argyle & Sutherland Highlanders, at the Somme on the 27th August 1916 and he’s commemorated alongside 72,088 others at the dramatic “Monument to the Fallen” memorial designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens at Thiepval on the D73 road between Baupaume and Albert. This monument is for soldiers who fell at the Somme who have no known grave or were not identified and his name is inscribed on panel 15C. The entry in "Ireland's Memorial Record" shows he was 24 when he died. To escape from poverty in Ireland they had moved to Bonnybridge near Glasgow and worked in the summer months as “tattie hokers”, the term for agricultural labourer’s who worked on the back breaking potato (tatties in the Scots dialect) harvest for bed and board and low wages. He joined up with the venerable Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders who are based at Scotland’s historic Stirling Castle and is commemorated on the Roll of Honour there and at The Scottish War Memorial at Edinburgh Castle. Disgracefully, to visit the latter you have to pay an expensive admission charge into the tourist theme park which is the modern Edinburgh Castle. We were able to trace his war record from a photo which showed the distinctive hat band of the Argyle and Sutherlands. His brother (my wife’s maternal grandfather) served in the Merchant Navy during the war and survived to live to a ripe old age.


Edward Kenny's War record Card - Transferred to France 13/9/1915 - KIA 27/8/1916


Edward Kenny commemorated in "Ireland's Memorial Record" Click to see a larger image

My great uncle who fell in WW1 was Private James Mc Mahon of the 6th. Bn. Royal Dublin Fusiliers and by coincidence he hailed from Clara, Co. Offaly, the same county as my wife’s great uncle. Unlike my wife’s relative James McMahon has a grave in the Aisne, the Department beyond the Somme whose capital is Cambrai and where the front line had stopped when the hostilities ended with the Armistice at 11 in the morning on the 11th November 1918. James McMahon was killed on the 8th October 1918 at a village called Beaurevoir, one of roundly 90 young Dublin Fusiliers who were killed from the 8th to 11th October and are buried with him in the cemetery. He was killed, aged 20, just over 4 weeks from the end of the war taking part in the so called “March to Victory” which lasted for 100 days until the Armistice. While not obvious today when viewing the sleepy countryside, in 1918 this was the last part of the fortified Hindenburg Line being attacked by tired and inexperienced British Troops resulting in disproportionate casualties amongst the attackers.


James McMahon's grave Beaurevoir, Aisne, France

Like all the Commonwealth cemeteries it is beautifully maintained and lies on the edge of the village with the standard layout of the Cross of Remembrance and a shelter for visitors which also holds the Book of Remembrance. James lies in a row of other Dublin Fusiliers aged from 18 to 21 with his name on the headstone given as “B. J. McMahon”. I wasn’t expecting to feel a great deal of connection with somebody who died so many years before I was born but being there amongst the graves of so many young Irish soldiers who all died on the 8th October 1918 was surprisingly moving.


James McMahon commemorated in "Ireland's Memorial Record"

In our fallen relatives home towns of Edenderry and Clara there are still “British Legion” houses provided for ex-soldiers and their families and in the decades of poverty and economic stagnation many Irish families were quietly grateful for the “War Pensions” they received. Ireland was neutral during the Second World War but many served in the British forces and many also worked in England both to survive and help the war effort including my Grandfather and two uncles who travelled on British Legion travel warrants and worked for the electronics firm Lucas in Birmingham during the war whilst living in a company dormitory. My father at the age of ten and his family on the other hand came in the other direction as refugees from the devastating blitz in Coventry.



On Armistice Day I too am proud to wear a poppy not in support of British Militarism or to legitimise the wanton waste of life in war. Rather I wear it to remember the great sacrifice of Edward Kenny and James McMahon and all their comrades who made a brave personal choice to fight for the greater freedom of humanity and paid the ultimate price for their beliefs.


Gurkha Tul Bahadur Pun VC

I leave the last word to the “Last Tommy” Harry Patch who thought that his comrade’s sacrifice had been in vain because what the world achieved was not “Peace in our Time” but rather it set the scene for the conflict of WW11. He expressed himself movingly and plainly in interviews in 2004;


Harry Patch 1898 - 2009

“I was taken back to England to convalesce. When the war ended, I don't know if I was more relieved that we'd won or that I didn't have to go back. Passchendaele was a disastrous battle — thousands and thousands of young lives were lost. It makes me angry. Earlier this year, I went back to Ypres to shake the hand of Herr Kuentz, Germany's only surviving veteran from the war. It was emotional. He is 107. We've had 87 years to think what war is. To me, it's a licence to go out and murder. Why should the British government call me up and take me out to a battlefield to shoot a man I never knew, whose language I couldn't speak? All those lives lost for a war finished over a table. Now what is the sense in that?"

......."It wasn’t worth it. No war is worth it. No war is worth the loss of a couple of lives let alone thousands. T’isn’t worth it … the First World War, if you boil it down, what was it? Nothing but a family row. That’s what caused it. The Second World War – Hitler wanted to govern Europe, nothing to it. I would have taken the Kaiser, his son, Hitler and the people on his side … and bloody shot them. Out the way and saved millions of lives. T’isn’t worth it."

See also;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2007/11/towards-somme-personal-journey.html

Armistice Day 2009 - End of a generation

The passing of the First World War generation was marked by a special memorial service at Westminster Abbey today as millions of people across Britain and Europe observed the two-minute Armistice Day silence.

Ninety-one years after the guns fell silent at 11am on 11th November, 1918, the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh joined Gordon Brown, senior politicians and the heads of the armed forces in the solemn ceremony which commemorated the passing of the final three veterans of the war living in Britain, who all died this year. William Stone died in January, aged 108, followed in July by Henry Allingham, 113, and Harry Patch, 111. The only remaining British-born survivor of the war, former seaman Claude Choules, who is 108 now lives in Australia.


Poppies in the fountains at Trafalgar Square

Few can have been unmoved by the poignant sight at the last commemoration at the Cenotaph in Whitehall, London of these last surviving veterans of the First World War joining serving soldiers in current conflicts to mark the 90th anniversary of the day peace returned to Europe. Then Henry Allingham, Harry Patch and Bill Stone led the nation as it remembered the sacrifices made by the 1914-1918 generation. They each represented the armed service they belonged to - for Mr Allingham the Royal Air Force, Mr Patch the Army and Mr Stone the Royal Navy. All three men laid wreaths at the Cenotaph in central London to commemorate Armistice Day. Sadly, but not too surprisingly, all have now died since that ceremony.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/07/farewell-old-soldiers.html


Henry Allingham, Harry Patch and Bill Stone

Being in Westminster and not too far from the Abbey which was the venue for the ceremonies you notice the minutiae of these occasions, the police checking lampposts and sealing manhole covers before hand, the veterans with their medals heading to the ceremony, the Guards colour party in great coats and bearskins marching briskly along the footpath from Wellington Barracks, the ambassador’s cars with their flags going down Toothill Street and the boom of the field in Green Park announcing at 11 the beginning of the silence and two minutes later the boom announcing it ending. Why Gordon Brown’s car passed along Petty France this morning on his way to the Abbey taking a different route from the back of Downing Street to the front of the Abbey. As is the way here these ceremonies are well oiled and practiced with no need for self important motorcades or grandiosity. Wars are and, we sometimes forget, have always been controversial but the orchestrated personal attacks on Gordon Brown by Rupert Murdoch and the tatty Sun “newspaper” represents a new low by the Dirty Digger and his hired help who arrogantly feel they can manipulate the British Public and British Democracy.


Theipval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme

But none of this controversy about current military engagements should in any way to detract from the personal heroism or sacrifice of soldiers in battle and it is right that their bravery is commemorated each year on Armistice Sunday, the service held on the Sunday closest to Armistice Day, the anniversary of the end of the fighting in World War 1 at 11.00 am on the 11th November 1918. Indeed when you read the obituaries of those who served in the wars and the enormous responsibilities and decisions they had to undertake at a tender age you somehow feel that those of us whose lives have not been tempered by war have somehow led shallow lives by contrast. However we largely read about those who survive, not those who perished.

This was brought home to me some years ago when I made a personal journey to the battle fields for there were deaths on both sides of my family in the First World War. My wife’s great uncle Edward Kenny who died with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders in the Battle of the Somme in 1916 and my Great Uncle, James McMahon who died with the Royal Dublin Fusiliers at Beaurevoir in the Ainse 5 weeks before the end of the war in 1918.


Private Edward Kenny

Private Edward Kenny, originally from Edenderry, Co. Offaly had fallen with the 2nd. Bn. Argyle & Sutherland Highlanders, at the Somme on the 27th August 1916 and he’s commemorated alongside 72,088 others at the dramatic “Monument to the Fallen” memorial designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens at Thiepval on the D73 road between Baupaume and Albert. This monument is for soldiers who fell at the Somme who have no known grave or were not identified and his name is inscribed on panel 15C. The entry in "Ireland's Memorial Record" shows he was 24 when he died. To escape from poverty in Ireland they had moved to Bonnybridge near Glasgow and worked in the summer months as “tattie hokers”, the term for agricultural labourer’s who worked on the back breaking potato (tatties in the Scots dialect) harvest for bed and board and low wages. He joined up with the venerable Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders who are based at Scotland’s historic Stirling Castle and is commemorated on the Roll of Honour there and at The Scottish War Memorial at Edinburgh Castle. Disgracefully, to visit the latter you have to pay an expensive admission charge into the tourist theme park which is the modern Edinburgh Castle. We were able to trace his war record from a photo which showed the distinctive hat band of the Argyle and Sutherlands. His brother (my wife’s maternal grandfather) served in the Merchant Navy during the war and survived to live to a ripe old age.


Edward Kenny's War record Card - Transferred to France 13/9/1915 - KIA 27/8/1916


Edward Kenny commemorated in "Ireland's Memorial Record" Click to see a larger image

My great uncle who fell in WW1 was Private James Mc Mahon of the 6th. Bn. Royal Dublin Fusiliers and by coincidence he hailed from Clara, Co. Offaly, the same county as my wife’s great uncle. Unlike my wife’s relative James McMahon has a grave in the Aisne, the Department beyond the Somme whose capital is Cambrai and where the front line had stopped when the hostilities ended with the Armistice at 11 in the morning on the 11th November 1918. James McMahon was killed on the 8th October 1918 at a village called Beaurevoir, one of roundly 90 young Dublin Fusiliers who were killed from the 8th to 11th October and are buried with him in the cemetery. He was killed, aged 20, just over 4 weeks from the end of the war taking part in the so called “March to Victory” which lasted for 100 days until the Armistice. While not obvious today when viewing the sleepy countryside, in 1918 this was the last part of the fortified Hindenburg Line being attacked by tired and inexperienced British Troops resulting in disproportionate casualties amongst the attackers.


James McMahon's grave Beaurevoir, Aisne, France

Like all the Commonwealth cemeteries it is beautifully maintained and lies on the edge of the village with the standard layout of the Cross of Remembrance and a shelter for visitors which also holds the Book of Remembrance. James lies in a row of other Dublin Fusiliers aged from 18 to 21 with his name on the headstone given as “B. J. McMahon”. I wasn’t expecting to feel a great deal of connection with somebody who died so many years before I was born but being there amongst the graves of so many young Irish soldiers who all died on the 8th October 1918 was surprisingly moving.


James McMahon commemorated in "Ireland's Memorial Record"

In our fallen relatives home towns of Edenderry and Clara there are still “British Legion” houses provided for ex-soldiers and their families and in the decades of poverty and economic stagnation many Irish families were quietly grateful for the “War Pensions” they received. Ireland was neutral during the Second World War but many served in the British forces and many also worked in England both to survive and help the war effort including my Grandfather and two uncles who travelled on British Legion travel warrants and worked for the electronics firm Lucas in Birmingham during the war whilst living in a company dormitory. My father at the age of ten and his family on the other hand came in the other direction as refugees from the devastating blitz in Coventry.



On Armistice Day I too am proud to wear a poppy not in support of British Militarism or to legitimise the wanton waste of life in war. Rather I wear it to remember the great sacrifice of Edward Kenny and James McMahon and all their comrades who made a brave personal choice to fight for the greater freedom of humanity and paid the ultimate price for their beliefs.


Gurkha Tul Bahadur Pun VC

I leave the last word to the “Last Tommy” Harry Patch who thought that his comrade’s sacrifice had been in vain because what the world achieved was not “Peace in our Time” but rather it set the scene for the conflict of WW11. He expressed himself movingly and plainly in interviews in 2004;


Harry Patch 1898 - 2009

“I was taken back to England to convalesce. When the war ended, I don't know if I was more relieved that we'd won or that I didn't have to go back. Passchendaele was a disastrous battle — thousands and thousands of young lives were lost. It makes me angry. Earlier this year, I went back to Ypres to shake the hand of Herr Kuentz, Germany's only surviving veteran from the war. It was emotional. He is 107. We've had 87 years to think what war is. To me, it's a licence to go out and murder. Why should the British government call me up and take me out to a battlefield to shoot a man I never knew, whose language I couldn't speak? All those lives lost for a war finished over a table. Now what is the sense in that?"

......."It wasn’t worth it. No war is worth it. No war is worth the loss of a couple of lives let alone thousands. T’isn’t worth it … the First World War, if you boil it down, what was it? Nothing but a family row. That’s what caused it. The Second World War – Hitler wanted to govern Europe, nothing to it. I would have taken the Kaiser, his son, Hitler and the people on his side … and bloody shot them. Out the way and saved millions of lives. T’isn’t worth it."

See also;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2007/11/towards-somme-personal-journey.html