Why!

How to put into words all that I have seen, all that I have thought today? How to select one picture from so many?

I was less than enthusiastic about Gordon’s planned tour of The Somme. I am not as fascinated by the ins and out of battle during any war and in the past we have visited many memorials and cemeteries in France and Belgium, often looking for specific grave stones when I had researched the history of an individual. I did not really relish yet more cemeteries and battlegrounds. But I was willing to go along with it.
 
And I was entranced. I have gazed in awe at huge memorials, such as that at Thiepval, where we arrived just as a service was held, including readings, trumpet solos and a two minute silence. I have wondered at a huge shell crater at La Bosselle and listened amazed as a guy, who comes over from Scotland several times a year to care for the ground, told us exactly what happened where. I have looked on in sadness beyond comprehension at rows and rows of gravestones. I have walked through preserved trenches, now flowering and full of butterflies, and tried to imagine shellfire, fear and death. I linked today with the visits we made to the ‘Poppies’ in London, where one poppy was one life; here I saw, across fields of crops, the very places where many of those lives were lost – where those soldiers lived their last days and minutes.
 
So, a day to think about and remember. And definitely to ask the question: Why? and – Why is it still happening in the world today? Questions I thought were captured in the image of the Caribou at the Newfoundland Memorial at Beaumont-Hamel. Or perhaps in the Welsh Dragon, with barbed wire in his claws, at Mametz (see extra)