Touring Death :: 09:50 PM :: easyjetsetter

As you may discern from the title, dear readers, I have come back from the Somme. A departement to the north-east of Paris, and made famous by possibly the most criminal thing that man has ever done.

On July 1st, 1916, General Douglas Haig ordered the British (and Commonwealth) army to go over the top and to attack the German dugouts, which had been there for two years and were dug deeply enough and on high enough ground that the preliminary air and artillery attack did not have the desired effect of making it easier for the mostly working class men, many in 'pals' battalions made up from the same town or sports club, to attack the front lines of the enemy. 20,000 were slaughtered outright that day, with another 40,000 missing, injured, or captured. Over the next three months, as the battle of the Somme waged, over a million people died. All for the gain of a few hundred metres of land. All to distract from the fact that the French were about to lose the war for the alliance in Verdun. All for one chaps. Right-o?

We saw great stone monoliths in memoriam. We saw the trenches, no longer teeming, stinking pits of mud, lice and disease, that have been restored as part of the Canadian memorial. We saw the chirpy students who have given up their summers to lead ignorant, chattering tourists around the fields of slaughter. We saw the French graveyard and war memorial staffed by veterans, and felt the sense of anguish that still lingers there. We heard the carts and horses in our minds on the streets of Albert, and were surprised when the piping sound turned out to be real people, using their lungs to remind the world of what happened here on the most piercing instrument known to man: the bagpipes.

We saw the railway carriage where the Armistice was signed, in the clearing in Compiegne, because the generals felt it more appropriate than gilded offices to be in the fields where their men had died. The same carriage was later used by Hitler, enraged at the humiliation Germany had suffered there in 1918, for the signing of the end of conflict with France in 1940, and he insisted in sitting in the seat formerly occupied by Marechal Petain 22 years ago.

We saw the seemingly infinite lists of names. We saw photographs of whole villages turned to mud, whole forests to firewood, whole battalions to carrion. We saw the poems of Siegfried Sassoon, Appollinaire, and Wilfred Owen amongst letters home, tightly scripted by the government. We saw the art of Otto Dix scribble deciminated, black landscapes lit up by shell fire.

And we saw graves. Masses and masses of graves, across hundreds of graveyards, from tens of countries, including Germany.

We saw that there were hardly any French people out in the glorious sunshine, with the first poppies peeking from the ground, to see what had happened to their country not even one hundred years ago. The proprietors of the visitor centres, built by British citizens' donations, confirmed this. Anybody French who I told I was going to the Somme said "why?"

Because they want to share their world expo pavillion and a TV channel and their overseas cultural institutes with Germany, and eventually allow French citizens to become German ones if they wish, and because Germany is France's New Best Friend, the French have forgotten the injunction on all their memorials: "on n'oubliera jamais" (we will never forget.) Now the Armistice clearing is a nice spot for a picnic for weekend bicyclists and our European national anthem is Ode an die Freude.

I'm not saying a country is more to blame for the carnage than another - especially when I think about what our side's commanders did to their soldiers - but I feel an overwhelming sense of sadness that something that mattered so much has been forgotten by so many in the name of harmony and increasing cultural homogeneity.

I'm sorry. I don't feel like trying to be funny tonight. Go and find out which of your ancestors, on whatever side, died in a war of territory fought by the poorest, and remembered by not the strongest, not the bravest, or even the most intelligent, only by those who had the luck to survive. They called it the Great War, and that, and they, merit more from us.