Reflections on the New Menin Gate 

– ‘this sepulchre of crime’ [Siegfried Sassoon]

Last week, with three project volunteers, I went to the battlefields of NW Belgium – my first visit. We planned to tour dozens of CWGC cemeteries around the town of Ieper(Ypres) – a place synonymous with the suffering and loss of more than 200,000 British and Dominion troops.

A focal event of any visit to the area is the Last Post ceremony held each evening at 8pm under the massive monument which stands over the road leading from Ieper to Menen - the exit for many thousands of British soldiers who would never return from the wasteland of shellfire and unimaginable horrors of trench warfare.

What strikes you immediately is the town itself and the orderly normality of a place that was reduced to an unrecognisable desert of rubble and the detritus of war 100 years ago. The town was rebuilt rapidly, including the massive Cloth Hall and nearby cathedral. Because of this the minor industry of battlefield tours operating daily seems almost at odds with an unremarkable small town community that has to live under the shadow of a monument whose very construction was controversial.

85 years after its unveiling the Menin Gate, inscribed with the names of almost 55000 men with no known grave from fighting in the Ypres Salient, stands as an unavoidable reminder of the suffering of the Belgian people and the cost borne by the British forces as they steadfastly maintained a toe-hold on Belgian soil - a political gesture; when military logic suggested a withdrawal to the west would perhaps have saved tens of thousands of lives.

Outside the town today one has to try hard to imagine the scene which greeted the returning Belgians in November, 1918. Lush pastures today however harbour reminders of the savage and brutal conflict which drenched these fields in blood and inspired John McCrae to write his famous poem –‘In Flanders Fields’.

The crosses he observed were replaced by the immaculate rows of headstones in dozens of cemeteries; many the final resting place of a man described only as ‘A soldier of the Great War’ and bearing Kipling’s famous epitaph ‘Known unto God’. The serenity and peace to be found in these little-visited fragments of Belgium contain anything from a few dozens to thousands of graves. Private soldiers lying alongside generals: the known amongst the unknown – preserving the Commission’s principle of equality in death.

So, how to sum up a visit which posed many questions, on one hand a raucous group of British schoolchildren, led by teachers who seemed unable or unwilling to control them - is this place just becoming a tourist attraction? Through to the mind numbing image of the walls of the Menin Gate, carrying lists of names, regiment by regiment in alphabetic order by rank, so numerous that they read almost like the pages of a telephone book – did we learn anything from this tragedy?

For the project we have secured photographs of many men’s memorials for inclusion in their database record – for that reason alone the trip was worthwhile.

Anyone with information on this week’s casualties or anyone killed or died as a result of the war is asked to contact the project. The project workroom at Room B9 Linskill Community Centre, Trevor Terrace, North Shields is open from 1000 to 1600 each weekday for visitors and for anyone interested to learn more about the project or how to get involved.

Alan Fidler

London Seminar showed the breadth of memorial projects

At a seminar hosted by the Imperial War Museum on HMS Belfast by Tower Bridge last Wednesday (15^th May) I was able to meet with some of the hundreds of representatives of community projects, museums and universities who plan to commemorate the Great War. A common theme was a determination that the contribution of every part of the United Kingdom to the war was acknowledged as we approach the centenary in 2014.

It became clear early in the seminar that the many projects today can harness the social and other media which abounds and use it for good, to engage with the younger generation and ensure that the lessons of that terrible conflict are not overlooked. Research commissioned by the government has shown that there are very varied perceptions amongst people of different generations and awareness of the Great War and its consequences.

Although a polling organisation British Futures has found diverse opinions on how best to commemorate the war, widespread interest in the centenary is obvious – including amongst ethnic minority communities, where there is strong interest in the role played by the more than 2 million troops drawn from the Indian Empire and other colonies.

The IWM’s Centenary Projects database showed that the main areas of activity are centred on exhibitions (276), one off events (1443) and digitisation of information / web-based learning projects. Like some others, the Tynemouth Project is planning a wide range of events covering all of those noted above and more.

The IWM is developing a ‘timeline’ for the war to allow people with no special knowledge to better understand events/ battles involving their relatives in the context of the conflict overall. This will be available in the near future at their website www.1914.org

In order that all the work being undertaken across the world can be made available readily a system of direct data entry will allow IWM recognised centenary projects such as ours to load information directly to the site.

Despite recent press comment suggesting the UK is behind in its planning for 2014, I came away reassured that much is already in hand and that the Tynemouth project will be playing a full part in the nation’s collective commemoration. You can now follow our project on Twitter - @tynemouthWW1 – three hundred and forty five persons with an interest in the centenary already do so, with more following us every day.

Alan Fidler

Free training in family history and opportunities for new volunteers.

The Tynemouth Project has been engaged for two years assembling the history of the more than 1700 men of the former Borough killed or died as result of the Great War. Now, as the centenary of the beginning of the war looms, in just 14 months, the project is moving into a new phase. A number of tasks are nearing completion whilst events planned for the centenary year – 2014 - are now entering a detailed planning stage. A number of opportunities will arise for new volunteers to join the project to carry out a range of tasks associated with the staging of an exhibition of materials brought to us by relatives over the past 28 months and the organisation of a major commemorative event in Northumberland Square on 3^rd August, 2014.

In addition, we hope that there will be a concert in September, 2014 at The Sage - Gateshead, that will mark the enormous rush to join up by men from across the North East and which made such a significant contribution to the raising of the Kitchener New Armies. This will be organised in conjunction with The Army Benevolent Fund and will feature musical entertainment with connections to the region and the war - both popular and classical. In addition there will be illustrations of the history of the formation of the many famous units recruited locally, with poetry, song, readings and an extract from a dramatic episode in the war currently being researched for a full length production by local writer Peter Mortimer.

The staging of these events will require a lot of organisation. Anyone who would like to get involved in any aspect of this programme is welcome to contact the project.

The project steering group decided recently, following a pilot survey carried out in one area of the town that it intends to proceed with its plan to place a memorial marker on as many of the houses still standing today from which a local man died in the war – subject to the agreement of the current residents. The development of this proposal will entail a significant amount of work for which volunteers will be needed to make contact with owners and residents of the properties concerned. Further details about this will be announced here shortly.

The Project’s grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund includes money to provide training in Family history research techniques and sources of information. This training is open to any member of the public who is interested in researching or finding out more about their own family and is not restricted to project volunteers. Training is delivered by Pam Walker, a qualified teacher of family history and a member of the project group. Details of this and the availability of places can be had from the Project Workroom or via e-mail from Pam.Walker@relativelyhelpful.co.uk

Controversy over national plans to remember war sacrifice

A row has broken out amongst those planning how the nation will commemorate the centenary of the Great War. With barely a year before the centenary of the beginning of the war, there appear to be two rival themes emerging amongst the members of the committee chaired by Maria Miller, the Secretary of State for Culture Media and Sport.

The group which wishes to see a restrained and non-nationalistic approach is exemplified by Sebastian Foulkes (author of Birdsong) and seems to regard any sense of celebrating Britain’s ‘victory’ as undesirable and offensive to the other nations involved – particularly Germany, where it seems there will be no formal government action to mark the outbreak of the war or the ensuing four years of conflict.

A rival camp believes that our understanding of the war was distorted in the 1960’s by the over-emphasis placed upon the works and memoirs of a small group of poets (many of them undoubtedly very brave men); the influence of Joan Littlewood’s ‘Oh what a lovely war’ and Alan Clarke’s history of the British Army ‘The Donkeys’.

This view has been put forward by another member of the committee: Professor Sir Hew Strachan (who is to deliver the first of the Tynemouth Project’s lectures this October in conjunction with Northumbria University). He believes it is important to recognise that there were issues of right and wrong in this war, and that the hard won victory of Britain and her allies should not be overlooked.

The proposed concentration on a number of totemic dates e.g 1^st July, 1916, seen by many as redolent of waste and senseless carnage provoked by incompetent generals, is to miss the point that lessons were learned, albeit at terrible cost. Strachan believes that to overlook the battle of Amiens (August 1918) and the final 100 days of the war is to deny the enormous success of the British and dominion forces.

The men who volunteered, and those conscripted later were fighting in what the vast majority believed to be a just cause, and you only have to look at the letters home from the front, or the massive expansion of the Royal British Legion in the 1920s and 30s to see that. Indeed, the view that heavy losses were a necessary price to pay in the struggle between right over aggression, comes across very strongly when you read the parish magazine of Christ Church in North Shields from that period.

Now, with only 14 months to the centenary of the fateful day in Sarajevo (28^thJune, 1914) that sparked the greatest conflict in history, the government’s plans seem in disarray or at best in dispute. On the other hand, here in Tynemouth and North Tyneside plans are well in hand to mark the events of the war recognising the sacrifice of the whole community and the consequences for families and those who returned.