November 12, 2018Armistice Day 2018
Exhausting to think about the truth of what 11 o’clock on the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918 really meant, when seen from the protection and sanctity of 2018.
The statistics are actually simply that: numbers. The struggle lasted 4 years and 4 months from the German declaration on 1 August 1914. It in the end led to the top of the German Empire, with the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II on 8 November 1918 (and him fleeing to exile within the Netherlands till his demise in 1941). The armistice was signed in a railway carriage at Compiegne, some 40 miles north of Paris (or 20odd south of the River Somme). It’s believed that 9 million troopers perished making it the bloodiest battle of all time (the Commonwealth Battle Graves Fee estimate the demise of at the least 887,000 troopers from Britain and its Colonies, with the French losses exceeding 1.15m), and an extra 7 million civilians. These numbers roll off flippantly, virtually flippantly, however ignore the reality that these had been actual folks from actual households.
After the declaration of struggle on Belgium and France, the Germans had been held up on the Battle of the Marne in early September. This successfully halted their advance however from it developed the 4 years of ghastly stalemate trench warfare on the Western Entrance, the place so many British and French (and German) troopers perished. The River Marne is a serious artery flowing via the Champagne area and the realm was beset by dwell warfare at its’ southern finish in the direction of Chalons. Certainly from some vineyards round Montmort St Lucy it’s doable to see the place the opposing networks of combative trenches had been dug.
Each household has a narrative about their losses within the Nice Battle and the LeComber household isn’t any totally different. Though fortunately established within the North West of England and with Estates in Ruthin, North Wales, following their Huguenot exodus from France a century earlier (LeComber et Fils remains to be the model of champagne Park Lane imports), the three younger sons had been all concerned in energetic service. Two survived: Lieutenant George who was within the RAF and Captain Eric within the Lancashire Fusiliers, though he died a number of years after because of his wartime accidents. Lieutenant Philip (2/seventh Manchester Regiment) was killed in motion aged 21 on the twenty seventh of March 1918 close to Harbonniers, main from the entrance a daring counter-attack towards the German Spring Offensive.
And so it was that on Armistice Day 2018, I discovered myself visiting the CWGC Heath Cemetery exterior Harbonniers. That is beneath 100 miles from Calais and brings residence the proximity of that battleground horror to the UK shores. Philip was posthumously advisable for the VC – which couldn’t be awarded as a result of no extra senior officer had survived to confirm his ‘sustained gallantry’, in accordance with his modern Lieutenant A A Lamb; Lamb kindly wrote to Philip’s brother George after the struggle to reiterate this heroism and to reassure the household that Philip was immediately killed from a number of bullet wounds beneath heavy and sustained machine gun hearth.
It transpires that the Germans (presumably) later buried his physique, together with two troopers from his regiment. By the point this was exhumed and reburied by the CWGC, the stays which are presumed to be his might solely be partially recognized (incorrect rank) from his uniform. That that is all identified and capable of be researched from the information of the CWGC is frankly astounding: the precise location of the grave from the place the physique was recovered (62d.SE.X.1.d.75.70, per the CWGC) in addition to the reburial location (Grave II. C. 4, Heath, once more per CWGC) is all fastidiously famous, cross-referenced with the motion of battle strains and timings of assaults that day – and all this a century in the past in ink and paper. I used to be moved by the marvellous cemetery and left a easy Haig Poppy Cross at what’s believed to be the grave of the LeComber Hero. Others had been additionally paying their respects at graves to troopers who had fought and died on this similar space in the course of the 4 years of struggle; folks they’d by no means identified however who they felt compelled to recollect a century on.
Three miles introduced me to fields the place the terrors of that skirmish waged in March 1918 had taken place and to the spot from the place Philip’s physique was exhumed on the twenty third of Might 1919. Miles and miles of flat and characterless agricultural land sandwiched between the 2 fatigued and unremarkable farming villages of Harbonniers and Vauvillers. The futility of struggle couldn’t be prevented or underestimated when confronted with such actuality; standing there, nothing superb struck me in regards to the pointless combating by younger males of their prime, over not more than a mile of heavy clay floor and with the hideous lack of life that emanated. An strange place on overseas soil for a struggle that Britain had entered via honor solely over that “scrap of paper” (a British dedication to defend Belgium hailing from an 1839 treaty), because the Kaiser had referred to as it (the Kaiser being a grandson of Queen Victoria).
Northern France was a really great distance from the Industrial powerhouse of North West England, the place the LeCombers had been extremely profitable and effectively regarded industrialists and engineers. I solely hope that Harbonniers and Vauvillers induced a notion of glamour when that telegram arrived with the household, to endorse the nice valour that younger Philip Hebdon LeComber displayed when he died, like so many others, combating for King and Nation.
