The Somme river flows through wooded vales, verdant pastures and gentle ridges. It is almost impossible to believe that this scene of rural beauty was turned into moon-like landscape, cratered and bereft of life a century ago.
Mark and I will follow in the footsteps of my Uncle Oliver who fought along Paschendale ridge in 1916.
He was a soldier in the Durham Light Infantry who survived the horror and carnage of the trenches and returned to his home in Durham never to tell about it.
It might have helped had he told his story, but post traumatic stress and it's consequences were unheard of in those days. So Uncle Oliver lived on in his quiet stoicism.
We will visit Vimy Memorial and pay our respects to a worthy ancestor and to thousands of others who, two generations ago, paid in blood the price of the freedom we enjoy today.
Lest we forget.
Ian
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