#thiepval

Sep 1916 In a front line trench at Thiepval, war photographer Ernest Brooks takes this photo, IWM Q 1071, of an exhausted soldier asleep during the  The Battle of Thiepval 

"Intersections d'assaults"

Landscape altered by the man

Thiepval Memorial, Authuille, Hauts-de-France

Henry – Harry – Robinson

Harry Robinson werd op 9 oktober 1916 als vermist opgegeven nadat hij op 1 juli 1916 had deelgenomen aan de aanval op de Redan brug. Er werd aangenomen dat hij tijdens de aanval is gesneuveld. Harry wordt herdacht op de Thiepval Monument als vermiste van de Slag bij de Somme.

Harry schreef op 26 juni een brief aan zijn moeder. Het bleek zijn laatste te zijn.

Lieve moeder,

Ik heb je pakket ontvangen, waarvoor dank. Dank Maggie ook voor de kaart die zij heeft gezonden, ik vindt deze erg leuk en ik waardeer het gebaar.

Misschien heb je het al gehoord: er komt een groot offensief aan. Ik ben er van overtuigd dat ik daar goed zal doorkomen.

De volgende brieven zullen erg kort zijn en ik kan niet alle dagen schrijven, dus vertel mijn vrienden dat ik gezond ben.

Blijf positief moeder, ik zorg goed voor mij zelf.

Ik moet nu afsluiten, ik schrijft zo snel mogelijk weer.

Tot ziens,

Best love to all.

Your ever loving son

Harry

Henry - Harry - Robinson

Harry Robinson was reported missing on October 9, 1916 after taking part in the attack on the Redan Bridge on July 1, 1916. It was believed that he fell during the attack. Harry is commemorated at the Thiepval Monument as missing from the Battle of the Somme.

Harry wrote a letter to his mother on 26 June. It turned out to be his last.

Dear mother,

I have received your package, thank you. Thank you Maggie for the card she sent, I really like it and I appreciate the gesture.

Perhaps you have already heard: a major offensive is coming. I am convinced that I will get through that well.

The following letters will be very short and I cannot write every day, so tell my friends that I am healthy.

Stay positive mother, I take good care of myself.

I have to close now, I will write again as soon as possible.

Bye,

Best love to all.

Your ever loving son

Happy Armistice Day, world.  If you have never read anything or seen the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme, I strongly urge you to do so--and why not on this, the 99th anniversary of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, when the world thought, “I guess we’ve watered our fields with enough of the blood of our young, let’s stop”?  Thiepval, while the grounds incorporate a cemetery wherein 600 French and British soldiers are buried (“That the world may remember the common sacrifice of two and a half million dead, here have been laid side by side Soldiers of France and of the British Empire in eternal comradeship.”), the memorial itself is covered in the names of Commonwealth soldiers killed at the Somme whose bodies were lost/unrecognizable/blasted to bits/hurriedly tossed in a common grave/buried under the muck and dread that was the Somme between 1915 and 1918.  72,246 names, in fact.  “Here are recorded names of officers and men of the British Armies who fell on the Somme battlefields July 1915 February 1918 but to whom the fortune of war denied the known and honoured burial given to their comrades in death.”  So.  Yeah.  That’s just the *British* soldiers, whose graves are otherwise unknown.  It’s quite unknown how many men overall were killed, even just in the first Somme Offensive, but something like 300,000.  So yes.  Happy Armistice Day, world.

A Royal Recycling (part 111)