Noble Sacrifice

 Standing among the trenches on Hill 62 in Sanctuary Wood, several kilometres east of Ypres in Belgium, I have a vague flavour of what life must have been like for the soldiers holding the British frontline in the Great War of 1914-18. The trenches snake around the hill, preserved exactly as they were ninety-one years ago, bolstered by more recently added corrugated iron sheeting shoring up the sides and acting as bridging. Concrete bunkers every few yards provided Spartan shelter during bombardments, the evidence of which – craters pooled with late autumn rain – are scattered around the hill.

It is raining again this morning. And the wind is blowing, beating down the last remnants of the dying, golden leaves. The weather must have put off visitors, for I am the only one present, which adds to my sense of privilege at being here. I jump down into a trench and walk carefully, following the steps of the khaki-clad patriots who would have inhabited this plot of disputed soil for months at a time, honoured to be in their noble space. Did anyone die here? I fear they did. I saw the evidence of sacrifice in the fading photographs displayed on the walls and in cases in the old museum building you have to walk through after paying your fifteen euros to get to the hill.

The desolation of the killing fields between the two front lines is hard to take in. Paschendale, the Somme – bleak, loveless, landscapes, where hope has been obliterated along with all sign of life. Images of the fallen abound, many in grotesque death poses: twisted limbs, eyes and mouths agape, frozen in moment-of-death expressions. Bandaged, legless corpses lie in the mud next to flyblown cattle carcases and wrecked carts. The mud, wet, deep and ubiquitous holds tight anything or anyone who weakens. Amid the desolation a strong man smiles at the camera. He has just taken a draw on a cigarette and whistled out the smoke. He has a thick moustache and his helmet sits at a slight angle on his head. It is a black and white picture, but his eyes are so piercing you feel sure they must be blue – blue smiling eyes, despite the wounded arm hanging from his neck in a filthy, ragged sling. Blue smiling eyes despite the carnage he must have witnessed, despite his beyond human trials, despite the mud. You hope he made it home.

Back on Hill 62 you imagine his comrades, seeing them clearly now, huddling in the trenches, coping, living in constant anticipation of eternal silence. Did they go, “over the top”? Perhaps some did. You get the feeling that many never got the chance. I tread carefully around the hill in awe, in wonder. I want to cry. I wish I had brought flowers, wreaths upon which I could have left messages, “To the unknown soldiers,” of whom there are too many to count in the war graveyards of Belgium and France. Unknown – but as much as the known, never forgotten.