Epitaphs of the Great War: The Somme - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1910500526 ISBN 13: 9781910500521

Publisher: Uniform, 2016

Synopsis

Limited by the Imperial War Graves Commission to 66 letters - and that included counting the space between each word as one letter - this first in a short series of books highlights what The Times called, 'the heart of the bereaved'; the thousands of silent voices that 'speak' from the war cemeteries. Voices which stand at the opposite end of the commemorative spectrum to the Cenotaph; an austere 'silent' tribute to the Empire's dead, the other a clamour of individual'voices', each one a personal tribute to an individual and cultural reference from the world which these soldiers and their families lived in.In this book, the selected epitaphs look at a variety of themes, tones and locations from both ordinary and famous backgrounds, the privileged and the poor- the officers and men who all lie in some corner of a foreign field. Second in the series publishing in 2017 will feature epitaphs from the Battle of Passchendaele (1917). A complete study of these epitaphs will be published to coincide with the centenary of the Armistice in 2018

About this title

Product Description:

Of all the voices of the First World War there is one that has been consistently overlooked, the voice of the bereaved. This collection of 100 epitaphs for soldiers who died during the Somme campaign of 1916 lets the bereaved families and friends speak through the inscriptions on War Graves Commission headstones. The book provides information on the soldiers and explains any biblical or literary allusions used in the short (they were limited to 66 characters) and often cryptic epitaphs.

Review:

"Archivist Sarah Wearne has compiled some of the 66-letter inscriptions chosen by the families of those killed during the Somme... Like the piles of shoes on display at Auschwitz, or indeed the field of 888,246 ceramic poppies planted at the Tower of London to mark the First World War s centenary in 2014, the cemeteries in France and Belgium build the mass out of the individual. They commemorate both the scale of the slaughter and the humanity of those who were killed. The same is true of Wearne s inscription project. From the inspiring to the harrowing to the humdrum, the epitaphs chosen remind us of the millions of individual lives that were cut short. As his parents wrote on the grave of Air Mechanic 2nd Class Albert Edward Sparrow, killed in a train crash nine days after the war ended: Only one in thousands / But all the world to us." --Robert Colvile - The Telegraph

"Sarah Wearne...has built up an impressive collection of epitaphs... This volume provides 100 epitaphs for men who lost their lives during the Somme campaign, with one page per man. Brief details are given, such as the action in which he lost his life, and a short biography. The origins of the epitaph are also given, often rooted in the bible, popular songs, or literature. Some are more obscure, but Wearne has comprehensively researched each to tease out the underlying sentiment. A wide range of soldiers have been selected, from different backgrounds and of different ranks, and through their stories Wearne conveys an impressive amount of detail about various aspects of the war.
For the Twitter generation used to 140 characters, as Wearne has aptly put it on the social media site, Allowed 66 characters to commemorate your husband/son, what would you say? This book shows you the breadth of feeling and emotion that this actually permits, and serves as a poignant reminder of the anguish and grief of the relatives trying to come to terms with the loss of their loved ones." --ww1geek.com

I can take you to places on the Somme that really matter for the history, or because of the men who died there and for what they mean to me. All battlefields are personal. For proof of this look no further than this gentle book by Sarah Wearne. I like it because it lacks any judgement.
Quite clearly she has deep feelings about the war, but they do not intrude. The book is borne out of a social media project, and I know from experience that maintaining them takes the discipline my own subsequently lacked. But the author sticks to the personal inscriptions of the bereaved made a century ago.
Their grief, their tributes do not need further enhancement. Explanation: yes. Interpretation: no. The device is simple as it is brilliant. Take an inscription from a soldier s grave and make him real for a new generation. A teacher friend of mine defines success on battlefield tours her A Level students make in how many of them connect with the men whose graves they see by the thousand. The author achieves this here.
On a long battlefield trip, we would sometimes visit too many, and one of our number made the point it was too much, he was cemeteried out.
This lovely book removes all that and drives the impetus on to the individual in as fine a way as I can remember and it goes deeper than Trefor Jones impressive On Fame s Eternal Camping Ground, a book I treasure because it includes my great uncle Les. It is important to understand how the poetry and religious texts of the age impacted on the people writing the inscriptions. We live in a very different world, but there is no doubt we would reach for popular and deeper verse of our own era if we had to do the same thing as the loved ones of the men lost a hundred years ago.
You would have to be a particular fish to make a book like this poolside reading for your summer holiday. But if the memorialisation of our war dead, on the Somme, or anywhere else, is important to your connection or understanding of the conflict then this is an essential little book. --Mark Barnes - War History Online

About this edition

• Publisher: Uniform
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1910500526
• ISBN 13: 9781910500521
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 132
• Editor: Wearne Sarah