Letter To An Unknown Soldier: A New Kind of War Memorial. Kate Pullinger

returned. Did you leave home whistling, upbeat and expecting adventure? Were you there at the outset, when people still believed the war was just and would be over in weeks, or months at most? How quickly did you realise you had been sold a lie? I look at you and wonder who you knew – did you serve with pals from home, all in together and watching out for each other, or did you join up far away from those who knew you, because you had something to hide? Did you by chance meet a boy called Cyril from Cornwall, who would have claimed to be eighteen, but who was just a child of sixteen? Did you, like him, leave the safety of your hometown to sign up in London, away from the friendly local recruiters, who knew your age and sent you home to your mother? How many were there like him in your unit? How many of them made it home, like he did? How many went on to have children, like Cyril’s daughter, my mother?

      You can’t tell me, of course, but let me tell you something. We still recruit children today, but we do it openly, seemingly without shame. We have learned nothing from your suffering and sacrifice; recruitment remains a numbers game. Children sign up more willingly, they ask fewer questions, and they get paid less. The ones who join up at sixteen these days often don’t have many life chances. They are too young to vote, but apparently old enough to serve. My grandfather Cyril was just a boy when he ran away to fight. What an indictment it is on our society that, one hundred years after he joined up, we have not progressed enough to apply the simple maxim ‘Children, Not Soldiers’ to our own Armed Forces. I’m glad you can’t understand, because I believe that if you knew how little has changed, then you, like me, would feel ashamed.

      Demelza Hauser

      45, St Albans, Mother

       I sit on the Board of a charity which works to prevent the recruitment of children into armed forces across the world. My grandfather’s story of running away from home in Cornwall at sixteen to join up in London is part of our family history. He died when I was very young, so I never had a chance to ask him about his experiences in the war. It makes me sad that a hundred years after my grandfather was a child soldier, we still recruit children into the Army.

      Somewhere in the world somebody is walking on the place where you fell. Or maybe they are lying on their back, face turned to the sun, picnicking with beer and sandwiches. Do crops grow on your grave? Cows move slowly across it? Does a farmhand bend to pick up a bullet casing and put it in her pocket? Has the minefield been ploughed over or left fallow? Are homes built there? Is there a town where once there were battlefields? Fields where once a town stood? Across five continents, one hundred years before you were sent into battle, and one hundred years since, and before and after, and before and after again, lying between layers of earth, under sand dunes, rocking upon the seabed, buried beneath rubble, incinerated into dust: the bones of the fallen. Almost anywhere in the world, wherever one of the living stands now, a warrior has fallen.

      We have forgotten their names: The Unknown Warriors. I wonder, at night when the station is still, do they appear from all directions? Dressed in uniforms of every kind, camouflage to cotton and followed by others dressed in the clothes of everyday, farmers’ overalls and jeans, business suits, high-heeled shoes, djellabas, rubber flip-flops and leather sandals, shorts, tunics and T-shirts, trainers, sports clothes and sun hats. I wonder if one day there will be another statue standing alongside you, to those people who fell beyond the battlefield, who were queuing for bread when the shells struck, or serving dinner to hotel guests at a poolside restaurant when a grenade was thrown, crossing the street when they were sighted through the crosshairs of a sniper’s rifle, sitting in front of their office computer when the first plane struck, shopping in a mall when armed gunmen burst in, walking to the fields when they trod on a mine, buying fruit in the bazaar when the suicide bomber passed by.

      Would you even recognise this new kind of warfare? As you board your train to France and the trenches, did you ever imagine it would come to this? Will there come a time when we will commemorate them, lest we forget: a statue, a tomb for them too, uncounted, countless? The Unknown Civilians.

      Aminatta Forna

      London, Writer

      Stay safe. Get back. Bring as many back with you as you can manage. Nothing else matters.

      Sean

      25, USA, US Army, Infantry

       For Nathan. I’m sorry I wasn’t there, dude. Things might have gone differently.

      Hello Tommy

      I never knew you, but my Grandfather, Fred, joined up, like you. He’d been a miner and worked at the pithead at Senghenydd – leaving just before 440 died in the explosion on 14 October 1913. He’d left the colliery to go and work in Dundee, where he also joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, before emigrating to New Zealand in 1911.

      Three years later, war broke out in Europe and after working as a gold-digger and miner in New Zealand, Fred joined the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZACs) as a field artillery driver. This involved driving a team of horses pulling a gun carriage into the field of battle. A few days after joining up there was an explosion on 12 September 1914, at the Ralph Mine in Huntly, where he had been working, claiming the lives of 43 men. He must have sensed then that he had some form of charmed life.

      Fred served at Gallipoli and at the Somme, where he was injured and hospitalised. Like so many others he never spoke of it afterwards. A million soldiers died or were wounded during the Battle of the Somme, and 100,000 died at Gallipoli, so it’s incredible that Fred survived both campaigns, albeit with injuries.

      After being evacuated to England on medical grounds, Fred was visited in hospital by Sarah Jones, who was raised by his half-sister after her own mother died. They fell in love and wanted to marry, but Fred was forced to New Zealand before he could be officially discharged by the ANZACs. Before he returned to the UK he worked for the Wellington City fire department.

      Fred made it home to Britain safely and married Sarah in 1919. They settled in West Chislehurst, a suburb of south-east London, and had six children, the youngest being my father. Never one to shy away from danger, Fred joined the London Fire Brigade and received a bronze medal in recognition of his ‘long and zealous service’. Fred served during the Blitz of the Second World War and must have faced considerable danger most nights. He suffered a number of shrapnel wounds while fighting fires during the war.

      In 1944, Fred was discharged from the fire service due to injuries, but he continued to work in the theatres of London’s West End as a fireman – responsible for lowering and raising the curtain during each performance.

      Fred died in 1967 when I was nine and I wish I’d had the opportunity to talk through his life with him. As I write this, Frederick and Sarah’s legacy is six children, 16 grandchildren and 45 great-grandchildren – 67 and counting. History has come full circle now that three of his 2 x great-grandchildren have been born in New Zealand.

      So although I never knew you Tommy, I knew one like you and you and all your companions, whether they died or survived are remembered. Thank you.

      Barry Rees

      Barry Rees

      56, Haverfordwest, Grandson

       To let Tommy know my Grandfather’s story.

      I remember the day you went to war. The cockerel was crowing all day, setting the hens to fuss. I had to calm them, Mam shaking her head, saying we’ll never get them to sit.

      I could tell how far down the lane you’d got. I heard you go by Rose’s dogs and then the crows lifted up out of Kings Copse and I thought it was you.

      One of Rose’s dogs got loose last week. I could hear shouting from up the lane and then one of his collies tore into our yard and flew straight into Jenny. She squawked when he hit her. All the cluck and loveliness come out of her at once. He looked at me then, just to check I understood the rules, then he grabbed her up and set off across Pike’s Field.

      That evening Rose came round with the dog on a short rope and said we should see it killed.