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discoveredinaljHello All.
Here at last - thanks mainly to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
byslantedlight's incredibly quick and efficient beta, is my fic for the Discovered In Remembrance challenge.
Please forgive the formatting - I have just spent nearly two hours trying to get the lj cut to work in the Rich Text panel, because I'm still not too hot on html-type stuff. And it won't play - God knows why. So - if I get it right - my fic should be under a cut
here...
In Flanders Fields the Poppies Blow
Between the Crosses, Row on Row...
“Christ.”
Doyle’s voice was almost reverential as he followed Bodie under the stone arch and into the neat, crowded cemetery. In front of them the ground sloped upwards in a gentle rise, a wide green path leading to broad shallow steps and a long, curving wall along the top of the hill, hiding the cloudless blue of the early morning sky beyond.
But what had led to Doyle’s half-whispered exclamation, what inspired the awed, almost stunned expression on his face as he stood next to Bodie just inside the cemetery entrance, was the gravestones.
Plain and simple and a pure, stark white, identical in size and shape and in the simple script used for their inscriptions, they spread out before the two men in row, upon row, upon row... stretched out on either side, bending round the hill so that there seemed no end to them, and upwards to crowd against the steps leading to the tall cross at the top as if they would overrun it and carry on, over the hill, down the other side, on and on and on...
“There’s so many,” he whispered, “So bloody many...”
“This is just one cemetery, mate,” Bodie told him. “It’s the biggest one – but you saw the road signs as we drove up here.”*
Yes, Doyle had seen them. As they’d driven to Ypres, it was as if they’d passed an invisible line drawn on the landscape. Doyle had become accustomed to the flat, intensively farmed countryside through which the almost empty roads ran ruler-straight since they’d left Brussels – a landscape that was virtually treeless save for the odd pollarded willow. After their successful interview with a French terrorist rather unexpectedly run to ground by the Belgian police, he’d been quite amenable to Bodie’s request that they take the long way home via Ypres so that Bodie could chase up some family history. And then, on the drive down, the monotonous scenery had suddenly sprouted signposts. Some were single, some were in clusters, appearing in ever-increasing numbers, pointing the way to cemeteries and memorials, monuments and museums... and all with one Flemish word in common: ‘Oorlog’ – World War.
This had once been the Western Front, and although Doyle had paid lip-service all his life to the ‘lost generation ’ of the First World War, had watched – when he remembered - the ceremony at the Cenotaph every November, and paid his due of two minutes’ silence - when reminded - on Remembrance Sunday, the sheer scale of the losses had never really hit home ... until now. The Second World War loomed far greater in his mental picture of things past – over barely three years before he was born, the scars it had inflicted on his country and the damage done to the people who had lived through it meant that it carried a far greater weight of emotions than the first great conflict that had been considered important enough to be called a World War. They’d galloped through it in his history lessons at school as well, he remembered – probably because the teachers had lived through a major war of their own, and personal experience beat book learning hands down.
But now, looking around this crowded but immaculate cemetery, the gravestones shining under the bright June sun, he was beginning to realise that those long-ago history teachers had short-changed him. That everybody ought to know and understand what had happened here all those years ago...
Bodie was watching him. “See that?” he said, pointing to a battered, vaguely rectangular heap of concrete looming above the gravestones to Doyle’s right. “That’s a German pillbox. There was a row of them all along this ridge – those craters in the concrete are shell damage. They couldn’t get through the walls, though. The Allies had to take them by storm. Was the ANZACs and the Canadians who managed it, in the end.”
Doyle looked at the huge, still somehow threatening grey mass, the slits where the machine guns once sat still visible in the battered walls, and then noticed the way it was facing. Down the hill, down that easy gradual incline... Flanders wasn’t quite ruler-flat, he realised – not round here.
“Don’t tell me,” he said after a moment, “They had to attack up that.” He gestured at the long, gentle, featureless slope descending away on the other side of the road which ran past the cemetery, and Bodie nodded, the bright June sun glinting off his dark hair.
“That’s right,” he said. “Up that rise, two or three miles, no cover, nowhere to hide... it took them months, and every inch was paid for in blood.” He paused before adding quietly, “It was called Passchendaele.”
Doyle had heard of Passchendaele. He swallowed hard, imagining fighting through the desolation and madness he’d seen in Nash’s paintings, shells screaming overhead and exploding all round, mud and blood, terror and death... he couldn’t imagine it, he realised. No-one could who hadn’t lived through it...
Bodie had turned away and was climbing slowly up the slope looking at the number of each row, and Doyle guessed he was searching for a particular grave. Hastily he followed as Bodie seemed to find the row he was looking for and began to move along it examining each name. He stopped as Doyle reached him.
“This is him,” he said, as if he was continuing a conversation. “Dad’s uncle – Captain William George Bodie of the 17th Battalion King’s Liverpool Regiment... was one of the Liverpool Pals, the 17th.”
Carefully Bodie brought out one of the small poppy-adorned wooden crosses which were available free from every shop in Ypres and placed it in front of the white stone stating that Bodie’s great uncle had received the DCM, had been all of twenty when he died, and that ‘We will remember him’. Then he stood back, assumed parade rest, and after two minutes' silence, saluted the stone with careful precision.
“Me Grandad never got over it,” he said conversationally, falling into step with his partner as they turned and headed for the end of the row. “Bill was his big brother, and Grandad hero-worshipped him. The family was so proud when he got that medal – and less than three months later he was killed! I was named for him... I’ve always wanted to see his grave – sort of pay my respects.”
Doyle said nothing, allowing a comfortable silence to fall as they carried on up the slope to the great cross and slab of white stone at the top of the hill. There was carving on the side of the stone, a phrase in plain, stark lettering –
‘Their Name Liveth for Evermore’.
In front of the steps, on either side of the path, were beds of roses in full, exuberant bloom. Under the strong June sun their scent rose shimmering into the air, and somewhere high above them a lark was singing.
Now that he was closer Doyle could see that the long wall running along the hill behind the cross was carved with lists of names – hundreds, thousands of names, in long vertical lines. Along the foot of the wall, or sometimes tucked in somehow next to a particular name, were more small wooden crosses and the same memorial poppies that were sold across Britain every November.
Bodie anticipated Doyle’s question. “That’s called the ‘Memorial to the Missing’. The wall is carved with the names of every soldier killed in Flanders whose body was never found,” he said softly.
“But when we drove through the Menin Gate this morning and I said I found it difficult to believe all those names were just those with no known grave, you told me they were. You were pretty vehement about it an’ all!”
“Well, yeah - those were the names of those lost up to August 1917,” Bodie told him. “When they started to build the Gate, they realised that there wasn’t enough room on the walls for all the names... so they added this wall, which contains the names of all those with no known grave who were killed after August 1917.”
“There were so many that they had to have two memorials...” murmured Doyle, stunned. He glanced back at Bodie, who was studying the wall in silence. “I mean, I knew there were terrible casualties, of course I did... but it takes seeing something like this to – to really make you understand something like that, deep down.”
“These are only the men who were lost in Flanders, don’t forget,” Bodie pointed out. “There are other memorials elsewhere – France, for instance. The one on the Somme is -”
“Jesus, Bodie.” Doyle’s eyes were haunted... and angry. “It’s... too much. All this slaughter – an’ what for? Because some useless bloody aristocrat got killed by some fanatic out in Sarajevo? It’s fuckin’ stupid! Why did they carry on fighting – I remember learning about Passchendaele, it lasted for six months! Six months, Bodie... for what?”
“Because Britain had signed a treaty with France, and promised Belgium that we’d protect her, and we kept our word,” said Bodie quietly. “Honour’s an old-fashioned word nowadays, Ray – but that’s what it was all about, really, when it comes down to it. Britain made a promise, and she kept it.”
“At one hell of a cost.”
“Honour always costs, sunshine – didn’t you know?”
Bodie was looking out across the fields where, sixty-five years ago, men had fought and screamed, bled and died, and Doyle wondered whether the ex-soldier really thought that these men had died for their country ... until Bodie added, in a soft voice, “’Course, the poor buggers in the trenches didn’t fight for that, exactly. Any more than I did, in Belfast.”
He glanced back at his partner. “Most of the time you’re fighting for the regiment, for your officer – if he’s a good officer – and for your mates.”
“Is that what you fight for now, then? CI5, Cowley... and - ”
“-And you. Yes, Ray. And if I’m honest -” Bodie smiled a little at Doyle’s expression “- I’m not so sure that it’s CI5 and Cowley first, any more. If I had to choose between you and CI5...” he patted Doyle’s shoulder, enjoying the way Doyle unconsciously leaned into his touch, “I’d choose you every time... it’s funny, I’ve been thinking about that since that mess with Ojuka, and worrying about it – whether it’s fair to Cowley,” he expanded, in answer to Doyle’s look of enquiry, “And today – looking at Uncle Bill’s grave... He won the DCM for rescuing a fellow officer under fire, and was wounded doing it. That officer, Michael Morrow, was his best mate – they joined up at the same time, they ended up as officers in the same battalion, and then Bill risked his neck to save him.”
Bodie saw that Doyle did not understand. “Bill left his men to save his mate, Ray, and it was just as well he did, because when William Bodie went down it was Mick who rallied the men and got them out. If Bill hadn’t saved Mick, the whole of Bill’s unit would have died with him.”
Doyle, being Doyle, tried to argue. “But that was pure luck, Bodie -”
“Of course it was! That’s not the point. William Bodie was a good soldier – everyone said so. He loved it. If he survived the war, he planned to stay in the army – become a professional soldier. But when it came down to it, when that decision had to be made, the career soldier chose his mate, not his career...
"And so do I.”
Bodie was smiling at Ray – an oddly gentle expression that Doyle had never seen before, and he blinked hard as he realised just what Bodie was saying. Then he sniffed fiercely and rubbed one hand across his nose, knowing that Bodie had seen his reaction and not caring.
“You going to tell Cowley?” he demanded, and Bodie shook his head.
“I think that after my performance at Avery’s house, he already knows,” he said cheerfully, “And he’s kept us together anyway. Hey, come on, Ray – I’m too damn good to lose!”
Doyle rolled his eyes in deliberately overplayed derision and the two men turned as one towards the cemetery gates as a coach full of schoolchildren pulled up outside. Bodie visibly shuddered as they began to disembark in a disorderly flood of excitement, shattering the peace of the cemetery and drowning out the birdsong with their shouting and laughter.
“Come on, mate, let’s head back to Ypres and find a bar.”
“We not heading back ‘ome yet?”
Bodie glanced across, but Doyle did not seem annoyed, just curious.
“Not yet,” he responded. “I booked us into the hotel for tonight as well as last night, because I want to be at the Menin Gate this evening.”
He sighed as Doyle’s expression remained blank.
“Bloody hell, Doyle, I despair sometimes. Every evening at eight there’s a ceremony of remembrance at the Menin Gate – and I want to see it, all right?”*
“Fair enough. I did know there was one, Bodie, I’m not completely ignorant – yeah, yeah, okay – I just didn’t know it was every night, all right? What ‘appens, anyway?”
“If you don’t know – it’ll probably be better if I don’t tell you, so you come to it fresh,” Bodie decided. “It doesn’t take very long, don’t worry.” And if I know Ray, it’ll hit him hard... Christ, it hit me hard enough the first time I saw it and I don’t have Ray’s bleeding heart, Bodie thought but did not say.
As they reached the Capri Doyle carried on walking across the road to lean on the stone wall dividing it from the fields beyond and admire the view, his unruly hair blown into total disarray by the gentle breeze. After a moment he beckoned Bodie over.
“Bodie, come and look at this.”
As Bodie reached his shoulder, Doyle gestured at the countryside before them. “Look at that. Those fields are red, not green. There must be millions of them...”
Bodie nodded, admiring the swathes of red splashed across the vivid green of the Flemish fields as if someone had taken a giant carmine paintbrush to the undulating countryside, using the land itself to paint a tribute to the fallen, and found himself murmuring the beginning of one of his favourite poems.
“In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row...”
“It’s like even the land remembers,” Doyle said softly, and glanced round at Bodie. “Thanks for this, mate,” He said seriously. “I’m glad we came...”
Bodie smiled at him, and together, shoulders touching, the two men returned to their car.
* * * * * * *
Title: In Flanders Fields the Poppies Blow…
Author: SAC
Slash or Gen: Gen
Archive: Yes please
Disclaimer: I really, really wish they belonged to me, but they don’t. I just like to play with them every now and then.
Notes.
Written for the Discovered in a LJ challenge ‘Discovered in Remembrance’.
*Tyne Cot cemetery is the largest WW1 cemetery of all and is on the site of the battle of Passchendaele, during the six months of which in 1917 the Allies lost over 140,000 men killed and half a million wounded and the Germans almost a quarter of a million. Tyne Cot, like all the WW1 cemeteries, is a beautiful and serene place, full of memories, and I defy anyone to visit it – or any of the hundreds of cemeteries in and around Ypres - and not be moved. Flanders is a place where the scars of war are still written deep into the landscape.
*Every evening shortly before 2000 local time, rain, snow or shine, the Ypres police close off one of the main roads into Ypres where it passes through the Menin Gate. At precisely 2000 local time, a bugler plays the Last Post under the great central arch of the monument and he, along with any others who may be present, observes two minutes’ silence. This is the people of Ypres’ own private tribute to all those who fell in the fighting in and around their town, and it has carried on without a break since the Menin Gate was completed in 1928. I have attended this ceremony more times than I can count and it never fails to move me.
If that hasn't worked, I can only apologise profusely and you can blame the LJ Help facility for telling me porkies!
Here at last - thanks mainly to
byslantedlight's incredibly quick and efficient beta, is my fic for the Discovered In Remembrance challenge.Please forgive the formatting - I have just spent nearly two hours trying to get the lj cut to work in the Rich Text panel, because I'm still not too hot on html-type stuff. And it won't play - God knows why. So - if I get it right - my fic should be under a cut
here...
In Flanders Fields the Poppies Blow
Between the Crosses, Row on Row...
“Christ.”
Doyle’s voice was almost reverential as he followed Bodie under the stone arch and into the neat, crowded cemetery. In front of them the ground sloped upwards in a gentle rise, a wide green path leading to broad shallow steps and a long, curving wall along the top of the hill, hiding the cloudless blue of the early morning sky beyond.
But what had led to Doyle’s half-whispered exclamation, what inspired the awed, almost stunned expression on his face as he stood next to Bodie just inside the cemetery entrance, was the gravestones.
Plain and simple and a pure, stark white, identical in size and shape and in the simple script used for their inscriptions, they spread out before the two men in row, upon row, upon row... stretched out on either side, bending round the hill so that there seemed no end to them, and upwards to crowd against the steps leading to the tall cross at the top as if they would overrun it and carry on, over the hill, down the other side, on and on and on...
“There’s so many,” he whispered, “So bloody many...”
“This is just one cemetery, mate,” Bodie told him. “It’s the biggest one – but you saw the road signs as we drove up here.”*
Yes, Doyle had seen them. As they’d driven to Ypres, it was as if they’d passed an invisible line drawn on the landscape. Doyle had become accustomed to the flat, intensively farmed countryside through which the almost empty roads ran ruler-straight since they’d left Brussels – a landscape that was virtually treeless save for the odd pollarded willow. After their successful interview with a French terrorist rather unexpectedly run to ground by the Belgian police, he’d been quite amenable to Bodie’s request that they take the long way home via Ypres so that Bodie could chase up some family history. And then, on the drive down, the monotonous scenery had suddenly sprouted signposts. Some were single, some were in clusters, appearing in ever-increasing numbers, pointing the way to cemeteries and memorials, monuments and museums... and all with one Flemish word in common: ‘Oorlog’ – World War.
This had once been the Western Front, and although Doyle had paid lip-service all his life to the ‘lost generation ’ of the First World War, had watched – when he remembered - the ceremony at the Cenotaph every November, and paid his due of two minutes’ silence - when reminded - on Remembrance Sunday, the sheer scale of the losses had never really hit home ... until now. The Second World War loomed far greater in his mental picture of things past – over barely three years before he was born, the scars it had inflicted on his country and the damage done to the people who had lived through it meant that it carried a far greater weight of emotions than the first great conflict that had been considered important enough to be called a World War. They’d galloped through it in his history lessons at school as well, he remembered – probably because the teachers had lived through a major war of their own, and personal experience beat book learning hands down.
But now, looking around this crowded but immaculate cemetery, the gravestones shining under the bright June sun, he was beginning to realise that those long-ago history teachers had short-changed him. That everybody ought to know and understand what had happened here all those years ago...
Bodie was watching him. “See that?” he said, pointing to a battered, vaguely rectangular heap of concrete looming above the gravestones to Doyle’s right. “That’s a German pillbox. There was a row of them all along this ridge – those craters in the concrete are shell damage. They couldn’t get through the walls, though. The Allies had to take them by storm. Was the ANZACs and the Canadians who managed it, in the end.”
Doyle looked at the huge, still somehow threatening grey mass, the slits where the machine guns once sat still visible in the battered walls, and then noticed the way it was facing. Down the hill, down that easy gradual incline... Flanders wasn’t quite ruler-flat, he realised – not round here.
“Don’t tell me,” he said after a moment, “They had to attack up that.” He gestured at the long, gentle, featureless slope descending away on the other side of the road which ran past the cemetery, and Bodie nodded, the bright June sun glinting off his dark hair.
“That’s right,” he said. “Up that rise, two or three miles, no cover, nowhere to hide... it took them months, and every inch was paid for in blood.” He paused before adding quietly, “It was called Passchendaele.”
Doyle had heard of Passchendaele. He swallowed hard, imagining fighting through the desolation and madness he’d seen in Nash’s paintings, shells screaming overhead and exploding all round, mud and blood, terror and death... he couldn’t imagine it, he realised. No-one could who hadn’t lived through it...
Bodie had turned away and was climbing slowly up the slope looking at the number of each row, and Doyle guessed he was searching for a particular grave. Hastily he followed as Bodie seemed to find the row he was looking for and began to move along it examining each name. He stopped as Doyle reached him.
“This is him,” he said, as if he was continuing a conversation. “Dad’s uncle – Captain William George Bodie of the 17th Battalion King’s Liverpool Regiment... was one of the Liverpool Pals, the 17th.”
Carefully Bodie brought out one of the small poppy-adorned wooden crosses which were available free from every shop in Ypres and placed it in front of the white stone stating that Bodie’s great uncle had received the DCM, had been all of twenty when he died, and that ‘We will remember him’. Then he stood back, assumed parade rest, and after two minutes' silence, saluted the stone with careful precision.
“Me Grandad never got over it,” he said conversationally, falling into step with his partner as they turned and headed for the end of the row. “Bill was his big brother, and Grandad hero-worshipped him. The family was so proud when he got that medal – and less than three months later he was killed! I was named for him... I’ve always wanted to see his grave – sort of pay my respects.”
Doyle said nothing, allowing a comfortable silence to fall as they carried on up the slope to the great cross and slab of white stone at the top of the hill. There was carving on the side of the stone, a phrase in plain, stark lettering –
‘Their Name Liveth for Evermore’.
In front of the steps, on either side of the path, were beds of roses in full, exuberant bloom. Under the strong June sun their scent rose shimmering into the air, and somewhere high above them a lark was singing.
Now that he was closer Doyle could see that the long wall running along the hill behind the cross was carved with lists of names – hundreds, thousands of names, in long vertical lines. Along the foot of the wall, or sometimes tucked in somehow next to a particular name, were more small wooden crosses and the same memorial poppies that were sold across Britain every November.
Bodie anticipated Doyle’s question. “That’s called the ‘Memorial to the Missing’. The wall is carved with the names of every soldier killed in Flanders whose body was never found,” he said softly.
“But when we drove through the Menin Gate this morning and I said I found it difficult to believe all those names were just those with no known grave, you told me they were. You were pretty vehement about it an’ all!”
“Well, yeah - those were the names of those lost up to August 1917,” Bodie told him. “When they started to build the Gate, they realised that there wasn’t enough room on the walls for all the names... so they added this wall, which contains the names of all those with no known grave who were killed after August 1917.”
“There were so many that they had to have two memorials...” murmured Doyle, stunned. He glanced back at Bodie, who was studying the wall in silence. “I mean, I knew there were terrible casualties, of course I did... but it takes seeing something like this to – to really make you understand something like that, deep down.”
“These are only the men who were lost in Flanders, don’t forget,” Bodie pointed out. “There are other memorials elsewhere – France, for instance. The one on the Somme is -”
“Jesus, Bodie.” Doyle’s eyes were haunted... and angry. “It’s... too much. All this slaughter – an’ what for? Because some useless bloody aristocrat got killed by some fanatic out in Sarajevo? It’s fuckin’ stupid! Why did they carry on fighting – I remember learning about Passchendaele, it lasted for six months! Six months, Bodie... for what?”
“Because Britain had signed a treaty with France, and promised Belgium that we’d protect her, and we kept our word,” said Bodie quietly. “Honour’s an old-fashioned word nowadays, Ray – but that’s what it was all about, really, when it comes down to it. Britain made a promise, and she kept it.”
“At one hell of a cost.”
“Honour always costs, sunshine – didn’t you know?”
Bodie was looking out across the fields where, sixty-five years ago, men had fought and screamed, bled and died, and Doyle wondered whether the ex-soldier really thought that these men had died for their country ... until Bodie added, in a soft voice, “’Course, the poor buggers in the trenches didn’t fight for that, exactly. Any more than I did, in Belfast.”
He glanced back at his partner. “Most of the time you’re fighting for the regiment, for your officer – if he’s a good officer – and for your mates.”
“Is that what you fight for now, then? CI5, Cowley... and - ”
“-And you. Yes, Ray. And if I’m honest -” Bodie smiled a little at Doyle’s expression “- I’m not so sure that it’s CI5 and Cowley first, any more. If I had to choose between you and CI5...” he patted Doyle’s shoulder, enjoying the way Doyle unconsciously leaned into his touch, “I’d choose you every time... it’s funny, I’ve been thinking about that since that mess with Ojuka, and worrying about it – whether it’s fair to Cowley,” he expanded, in answer to Doyle’s look of enquiry, “And today – looking at Uncle Bill’s grave... He won the DCM for rescuing a fellow officer under fire, and was wounded doing it. That officer, Michael Morrow, was his best mate – they joined up at the same time, they ended up as officers in the same battalion, and then Bill risked his neck to save him.”
Bodie saw that Doyle did not understand. “Bill left his men to save his mate, Ray, and it was just as well he did, because when William Bodie went down it was Mick who rallied the men and got them out. If Bill hadn’t saved Mick, the whole of Bill’s unit would have died with him.”
Doyle, being Doyle, tried to argue. “But that was pure luck, Bodie -”
“Of course it was! That’s not the point. William Bodie was a good soldier – everyone said so. He loved it. If he survived the war, he planned to stay in the army – become a professional soldier. But when it came down to it, when that decision had to be made, the career soldier chose his mate, not his career...
"And so do I.”
Bodie was smiling at Ray – an oddly gentle expression that Doyle had never seen before, and he blinked hard as he realised just what Bodie was saying. Then he sniffed fiercely and rubbed one hand across his nose, knowing that Bodie had seen his reaction and not caring.
“You going to tell Cowley?” he demanded, and Bodie shook his head.
“I think that after my performance at Avery’s house, he already knows,” he said cheerfully, “And he’s kept us together anyway. Hey, come on, Ray – I’m too damn good to lose!”
Doyle rolled his eyes in deliberately overplayed derision and the two men turned as one towards the cemetery gates as a coach full of schoolchildren pulled up outside. Bodie visibly shuddered as they began to disembark in a disorderly flood of excitement, shattering the peace of the cemetery and drowning out the birdsong with their shouting and laughter.
“Come on, mate, let’s head back to Ypres and find a bar.”
“We not heading back ‘ome yet?”
Bodie glanced across, but Doyle did not seem annoyed, just curious.
“Not yet,” he responded. “I booked us into the hotel for tonight as well as last night, because I want to be at the Menin Gate this evening.”
He sighed as Doyle’s expression remained blank.
“Bloody hell, Doyle, I despair sometimes. Every evening at eight there’s a ceremony of remembrance at the Menin Gate – and I want to see it, all right?”*
“Fair enough. I did know there was one, Bodie, I’m not completely ignorant – yeah, yeah, okay – I just didn’t know it was every night, all right? What ‘appens, anyway?”
“If you don’t know – it’ll probably be better if I don’t tell you, so you come to it fresh,” Bodie decided. “It doesn’t take very long, don’t worry.” And if I know Ray, it’ll hit him hard... Christ, it hit me hard enough the first time I saw it and I don’t have Ray’s bleeding heart, Bodie thought but did not say.
As they reached the Capri Doyle carried on walking across the road to lean on the stone wall dividing it from the fields beyond and admire the view, his unruly hair blown into total disarray by the gentle breeze. After a moment he beckoned Bodie over.
“Bodie, come and look at this.”
As Bodie reached his shoulder, Doyle gestured at the countryside before them. “Look at that. Those fields are red, not green. There must be millions of them...”
Bodie nodded, admiring the swathes of red splashed across the vivid green of the Flemish fields as if someone had taken a giant carmine paintbrush to the undulating countryside, using the land itself to paint a tribute to the fallen, and found himself murmuring the beginning of one of his favourite poems.
“In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row...”
“It’s like even the land remembers,” Doyle said softly, and glanced round at Bodie. “Thanks for this, mate,” He said seriously. “I’m glad we came...”
Bodie smiled at him, and together, shoulders touching, the two men returned to their car.
* * * * * * *
Title: In Flanders Fields the Poppies Blow…
Author: SAC
Slash or Gen: Gen
Archive: Yes please
Disclaimer: I really, really wish they belonged to me, but they don’t. I just like to play with them every now and then.
Notes.
Written for the Discovered in a LJ challenge ‘Discovered in Remembrance’.
*Tyne Cot cemetery is the largest WW1 cemetery of all and is on the site of the battle of Passchendaele, during the six months of which in 1917 the Allies lost over 140,000 men killed and half a million wounded and the Germans almost a quarter of a million. Tyne Cot, like all the WW1 cemeteries, is a beautiful and serene place, full of memories, and I defy anyone to visit it – or any of the hundreds of cemeteries in and around Ypres - and not be moved. Flanders is a place where the scars of war are still written deep into the landscape.
*Every evening shortly before 2000 local time, rain, snow or shine, the Ypres police close off one of the main roads into Ypres where it passes through the Menin Gate. At precisely 2000 local time, a bugler plays the Last Post under the great central arch of the monument and he, along with any others who may be present, observes two minutes’ silence. This is the people of Ypres’ own private tribute to all those who fell in the fighting in and around their town, and it has carried on without a break since the Menin Gate was completed in 1928. I have attended this ceremony more times than I can count and it never fails to move me.
If that hasn't worked, I can only apologise profusely and you can blame the LJ Help facility for telling me porkies!
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Date: 2008-11-09 12:56 am (UTC)And now a happy gerbil is off to seek her bed...
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Date: 2008-11-09 02:41 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2008-11-09 07:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-09 12:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-09 12:54 pm (UTC)Well done for winning with the LJ cut - it fights me each and every time!
Lovely story, thank you. You've managed to weave so much of the history and emotion into it, in such a quiet understated way. I don't know of anyone who attends the ceremony at the Menin Gate and isn't absolutely floored by it - I love that your Bodie decides to let Doyle understand for himself.
Thank you again.
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Date: 2008-11-09 01:30 pm (UTC)And I think you got the reactions of the lads spot-on.
Thank you!
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Date: 2008-11-09 02:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-09 04:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-09 10:48 pm (UTC)As for Tyne Cot, and the other cemeteries around Ieper (which is what the inhabitants call it) - they are very emotionally intense places, but I've never regretted my visits. In fact we're visiting Ieper again next year.
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Date: 2008-11-09 10:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-09 10:54 pm (UTC)Thank you. That was what I was trying for. That ceremony... I always end up with a lump in my throat, no matter how often I've attended. It's the... matter-of-factness of the people of Ieper that gets me. They do this every day because that's what they do - there's no rushing it, no disrespect, but somehow the very underplaying of the ceremony, the relaxed way they go about it, just makes it all the more touching.
Sorry - rambling! But since you've seen it you'll know what I mean...
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Date: 2008-11-09 10:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-09 11:02 pm (UTC)I didn't want to overstate things, I think underplaying is far more effective and more dignified for those we are remembering.
Yes, that ceremony at the Menin Gate really hits you in the gut, doesn't it! I think Bodie would allow Doyle to come to it fresh - and I think Doyle would want it that way as well.
And - I love your icon. Did you make it yourself?
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Date: 2008-11-09 11:12 pm (UTC)I do think that it is the sheer scale of the casualties that hits home on the first visit. Cemetery after cemetery... and then the Menin Gate, and all those names. I was in tears on my first visit, seeing names, and more names, and more names... and then to Tyne Cot, and that massive wall of names... it's like a punch in the gut, seeing it all for the first time.
I'm glad my vision of the Western Front was close to yours - and that you liked my lads!
Thank you!
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Date: 2008-11-09 11:22 pm (UTC)Thank you for commenting!
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Date: 2008-11-09 11:25 pm (UTC)Completely OT - will you be able to make the Scarsdale this year? It's my first time and I want to meet everyone!
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Date: 2008-11-10 12:27 am (UTC)If you are interested in seeing more of my pics and reading about my very special trip last year, click on Belgium in the tags in my journal - be warned, I may have got a little carried away, there are several posts!
And we visited Houthulst, not far from Passchendaele/Ypres which is a Belgian War Cemetery which was utterly beautiful. My son wanted to compare how the different countries laid out their cemeteries and the atmosphere created, or we might not have gone to that one. As you said elsewhere, sombre but very moving.
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Date: 2008-11-10 01:38 am (UTC)Thank you.
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Date: 2008-11-10 07:21 pm (UTC)Yes, that ceremony at the Menin Gate really hits you in the gut, doesn't it!
Totally - even giggling teenagers! The atmosphere is amazing, and it really hits you that they do that every single day. In Britain, we remember for a few minutes a year...
The formatting looks loads better now - you're getting scarily good at this!
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Date: 2008-11-10 07:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-13 11:52 am (UTC)I've read all the entries for this challenge, but have to stop now because I'm crying.
Thank you byslantedlight, for the beautiful poetry offered as prompts. I am hopeless at reading poetry, but love to have it read to me ... I've researched the snippets and noted the authors for future reference. I wish I could write half as well as you and all the other talented people who post here. Thank you!