Remembrance Day earlier this month was particularly poignant as it marked the centenary of the First World War and there were thousands of magnificent ceremonies held around the country.
The most extraordinary was a shrine of 888 246 ceramic poppies that encircled the iconic Tower of London titled ‘Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red’; each poppy representing the death of a British soldier or sailor.
One of those poppies metaphorically had the name of my great uncle, Thomas Austral Wright, on it. He is buried in the Arras Memorial in northern France, where he took his last breath.
I don’t think it was a particularly heroic death as he has no big medals to show for it; just one of the thousands upon thousands of soldiers charging a trench, bayonets drawn, into a maelstrom of German bullets.
He was a private in the Essex Yeomanry and was 25-years-old when cut down.
I had heard about Uncle Tommy from my mom who told me that a ‘man’ had come into her room one night in full military kit and asked her to let Cyril know that Tommy was all right.
Cyril was my mom’s father, Tommy’s brother. Everyone was intrigued by the story as my mom was six-years-old at the time and my grandfather, who immigrated to South Africa after the war, had never mentioned his fallen brother to her.
She described him perfectly; it was Tommy, without doubt. He had been dead for 10 years.
No English family was unscathed by that war and it caused huge anguish that many a husband, son, lover and brother was buried in unmarked graves on foreign lands. Those that were marked were done so with a small, roughly hewn wooden cross.
To ease that national distress, a remarkable man called Fabian Ware started the Commonwealth War Graves Commission with a simple mission: that ordinary men such as Uncle Tommy should be honoured in perpetuity for their extraordinary service.
Ware lobbied ceaselessly for permanent burial sites to be erected across the battlefields of Europe for the million-plus men, not only British but South Africans, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders and Indians, who gave their lives for freedom.
It was impossible to repatriate the piles of bodies, but at least they could be given a decent final resting place with their brothers-in-arms, something a soldier would understand.
Ware finally got the ear of people such as Rudyard Kipling, himself mourning a dead son, and Winston Churchill, and slowly the cemeteries started to take shape. Row upon row of pale headstones or white crosses rose with simple dignity across the battle-scarred lands.
Gentle tranquil gardens began to replace the bomb crates and barbed wire. Ware and his team accounted for 1.1-million casualties, and to this day, if remains are found, they are subjected to painstaking forensic identity research before being laid to rest with their comrades.
There are also graves for those lost at sea, facing the waves that never surrendered up those killed in battles that raged across the Atlantic or the icy Arctic convoys.
Today, thanks to Fabian Ware – who was knighted for his services to humanity – the Commonwealth War Graves Commission still keeps those graves pristine so that we never forget.
They are currently responsible for 1.7-million final resting places of those killed during the two World Wars, distributed over 23 000 burial sites in 153 countries.
It’s a humbling sight; row upon row of crosses from Ypres to Somme to Gallipoli.
It is desperately sad: yet hauntingly evocative – a small down payment of the free world’s massive debt of honour to ordinary men who gave the ultimate sacrifice.
And as we stood in silence on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, I could envisage, like my mom did when she was six-years-old, great Uncle Thomas Wright taking a salute.
