Paul Watkins is ten years younger than me, he was born in 1964. His childhood memoir, Stand Before Your God, was published in 1993 and made a huge impression on me.
He describes being sent by his parents, living in America, to the Dragon School and Eton. It is written with acuity, humour and he’s unafraid to show his feelings – so obviously his British Public School education was ineffective. There is a moving section where he goes alone one half-term holiday to Belgium. He had seen a documentary about WW I and read poetry written by soldiers, Blunden, Owen, Sassoon and felt he had to see Ypres and Passchendaele for himself.
He was moved by the cemeteries as every visitor must be. I have visited three or four of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemeteries in France and Belgium and was awed by the uniformity of the headstones, so many of them, the mood of tranquility and the knowledge that these graveyards came into existence amid the horror of total war. What I never thought about was how they were created and why they are all designed similarly. To understand that I read Empires of the Dead by David Crane and it is well worth reading.
His story more or less opens in the RAC Club in Pall Mall. On the day after the declaration of war this advertisement was published in The Times:
The Royal Automobile Club will be glad to receive the names of members and associates who will offer the services of their cars or their services with their cars either for home or foreign service, in case of need.
Fabian Ware, commander of the Mobile Ambulance Unit, got a Hudson, Vauxhall, Morris Oxford, Sunbeam and a Daimler. They were the vanguard of more than 200 cars shipped to France and converted into ambulances. Ware was born in 1869, so much too old to sign up as a soldier, and had been editor of the Morning Post. He was an able administrator and it was his energy, imagination, political acumen and drive that eventually created the war cemeteries we see today.
To be continued …
RAC information reminded me of research I was embarked on at the National Library of Ireland in 1970. Along with original sources I was reading Irish times for July and August 1914.
Day by day Events in Ireland were moving toward conflict…Carson,Redmond,Curragh Mutiny et al. Then suddenly the thunderbolt…a major war. Within a day or two of England going in started seeing notices that read like this:
” Gentleman of substance and means seeks first class motor for service on the continent.” Several of these fetched up with
Royal Irish Automoble Club being the contact address. The topper was a something like ” Skilled airman, Wright and French trained,requires areoplane in first rate condition for war service. Contact immediately.” The commonwealth cemeteries are of course full of the daring and the brave as well as men mangled body and soul as Ford Madox Ford describes them. I wonder if the first class motor fetched up or if the gentleman in question ended up with the Irish regiments in France or Gallipoli.