The Visit to
the
Cemeteries & Memorials of the Pirton WW1 War Dead
Jonty Wild's
description of the first project visit to the cemeteries and memorials.
My curiosity started when I was preparing a page for
the website featuring the war memorial. I knew
virtually nothing of World War 1. Of course I'd heard bits of
information about the carnage and losses, but I don't ever remember
being taught anything about it at school. As a boy, I'd been far more
interested in World War 2; guns, Spitfires, that type of thing, but
suddenly reading the names l saw the scale of the difference between the
wars. The war memorial itself told the story, from the small village of
Pirton the losses were 30 in WW1 to 6 in WW2 and it occurred to me that
difference might be reflected right across Britain. I have since learnt
that the total Commonwealth casualties were 3,100,000 for WW1 and
452,000 for WW2 *1.
For further information about the names I searched the
internet finding, amongst other sites, the excellent
www.roll-of-honour.com.
Lynda Smith from that organisation allowed the Pirton website to share
the information. This led to Derek Jarrett producing the excellent series of articles in the Pirton magazine.
The idea of visiting the graves didn't come until much
later and began in a discussion sparked off by the surfacing of a
scrapbook featuring WW1, held by Denise and Rodney Marshall. The
discussion led to an introduction to Tony French, who had recently moved
to Pirton; World War 1 is a particular interest of his. I produced a
copy of the scrapbook for him, leading to more discussions and
eventually the idea for the visit.
So on a cold dark October morning in 2004, at 3:00am I
found myself heading to Belgium and France with Tony French; 31 graves and memorial names
to find in 5 days and an assortment of other interesting sites and
museums to visit. Tony organised the trip and I thank him for his
knowledge, enthusiasm and great company.
I wasn't sure what to expect, visiting so many
cemeteries might be depressing, moving, boring? But I did want to show
respect for those young soldiers from Pirton, often fighting over a few
hundred yards of flat land, a slight rise in the ground or a small
wooded area.
In fact I found the trip fascinating, but I am
still trying to find the right word to sum it up, perhaps there
isn't one, the nearest I can get is sobering. I recommend that
everyone should pay a visit, perhaps not copying the whole of our
trip, but as a minimum, if you ever get the opportunity you must, at
least, do 3 things and, preferably in this order:
