The Barnston Monument.

Yesterday evening I went out for a consolation meal with a very good friend, we meet once a year; the first I see (or hear) of him he will be ushering me round a corner, asking if I need anything, and generally trying to be friendly and helpful. I’m not a special case, he treats all the riders the same. We have been meeting in this way, going out for a meal, spending much time righting the world’s wrongs and discussing curious technical problems. We have been meeting like this, probably for the last ten years and, yesterday, broke with tradition by trying a different venue. I had a glorified ploughman’s lunch served on a poncy wooden chopping board, why they couldn’t have supplied a plate is beyond me, but it was rather nice.
 
On the way back to camp we passed this obelisk and stopped to investigate: it is a monument to Major Roger Barnston who appears to have been a much decorated career soldier who died from wounds received at the Relief of Lucknow during the Indian Mutiny.
 
Now I may be treading on some peoples’ toes here, my apologies if I am, but I welcome alternative views on this matter. While at primary school, I was taught to be proud of the amount of the Earth’s land mass that was coloured red on the maps of the time, and particular emphasis was made of Major General Robert Clive’s exploits in India at the time of the mutiny; how he would confidently go into battle when outnumbered by a factor of ten to one and emerge victorious. No mention was ever made of Clive being a mercenary, or of the advanced weaponry and highly trained, well-fed men at his disposal, nor of the fact that his enemy were little more than slaves: untrained, ill-educated, half-starved and poorly armed. Barnston, it seems, while not having the fame enjoyed by Clive, was a soldier from a similar mould, and it seems to me that memorials such as this grade two listed building have no place in our heritage when we have plenty of heroes who fought against tyranny of whom we can be justly proud.