UNCLE OLIVER

My Uncle Oliver was born in England in the closing years of the nineteenth century. That meant he was eligible for call-up in 1915 for the Great War. By the tender age of seventeen he was in France and, a hundred years ago today, he went"over the top" at the Battle of the Somme River.
He survived the battle; six hundred thousand of his country men did not. They never returned from the human meat grinder which goes under the brief title of "WAR".
Such was the carnage of that conflict that my three aunts, sisters of Oliver, never married. There were few men of their age left in the area of Durham County where they lived.
A few years earlier these missing men had enrolled for the battle. Whole soccer teams, cricket clubs, 'old boys' associations were recruited. One went: they all went. One died: they all died.
A hundred years ago this week began the five month battle of the Somme River.
Grim, gallant memorials to that horror story stand in granite, in towns and villages across England and France (and in my home city of Barrie in Canada).
But MY memorial is of my Uncle Oliver, sixty years after the battle, slowly smoking his cigarette as he stared at the distant moors, as silent at the blue smoke that spiralled in his darkened living room.
Rest in Peace Uncle Oliver.

Your proud nephew, Ian.