Musings on Wootton Bassett and La Cambe..

During my years in the UK I have had to spend a good portion of my time in Swindon. It is home a lot of tech companies, in the go-go days of UMTS this was the place where it all got done. I never really placed Swindon anywhere in the "charm" rankings of place in the UK - and this island is full of such spots. Its been a few years since I have visited this area, having spent the last few years in the arms of Paris, but recently I have had occasion to want to visit this town again.

Near Swindon is a small town called Wootton Bassett. Quite undistinguished in many ways, but very typical of the small, self-contained Cotswolds village that also serves as a commuer village for those working in London or Oxford or elsewhere.

Of late, Wootton Bassett has developed a practice that has become quite notable for its impact, and a certain very deep sense of decency.

Whenever a British soldier dies in combat, his body is brought to Lyneham AF Base by the RAF and it is taken by hearse, wrapped in the Union Jack, to where he or she is finally laid to rest. And this route passes through Wootton Bassett.

For the last three years or less, the town crier or the head of the local British Legion receives a call notifying him that the cortege is about pass. Then, by word of mouth, the entire town assembles on the road that the cortege takes. The undertaker, in a black hat, meets the cortege and escorts it in a slow march through the town. And the whole town, shoppers, shop assistants, commuters, stand in silent salute as the fallen soldiers are driven through the town. It all began spontaneously three years ago when someone noticed that the hearse with a coffin wrapped in a flag was being driven through the town and no one bothered.

Now everyone observes this simple ritual, that in many ways is so quintessentially British. Simple, solemn and above all spontaneous.

Why do we honour our war dead? Lets set aside the obvious reasons - they are our fathers and sons and mothers and daughters and brothers and sisters, who fell doing their duty. They died for us. They died doing something we never had the guts to do, and they died while serving, which is probably a privilege that was denied to us.

I think the real reason they deserve the honour is because of the manner of their falling. All death is ultimate and awful in cases. But dying in war has to be one of the messiest ways to go. As the fog of war descends on the battlefield, dignity is set aside and primeval instincts take over, and someone dies and someone lives, and no one can really say how it all happened. While soldiers expect to die in battle, no one wants to. There is fear. There is cowardice. There is genuine heroism and great compassion. But in that moment there rises a cauldron in which all human life is reduced to a set of random instincts and emotions. Death and destruction. In this cauldron fall these young men and women. For this and this reason alone they deserve our honour and respect.

Recently I was in Normandy and I stood at Pointe-du-Hoc, and wondered at what drove 255 men to scale up a cliff overhanging the Channel to assault a well-entrenched German gun emplacement, with about half of them dying and falling off into the sea. The answers to this question have been provided by historians and glorified by a hundred Hollywood movies. I wanted to feel some of the solace that the fallen experience removed from the justification that triumph provides. Victory makes it all seem worthwhile, and that did not satisfy me entirely.

So I went instead to La Cambe, where the German War Graves Commission maintains the graves of 22,000 fallen Wehrmacht soldiers. I drove up there on a beautiful June day that in Normandy makes you wonder how so much of violence was endured there 60-odd years ago.

On a large green campus topped by a cross set on a mound, are the serried ranks of graves of the fallen. Thus far, not very different. But what you see are mainly German visitors, who come to the little chapel at the entrance and consult the Namenbuch that has the names of the fallen. Then they repair to the site of their fallen father or relative, and pay homage. History records that the Germans lost. But not all of the fallen were criminals. They were young men - some of whom died hurt, bleeding, crying for their mothers or loved ones, praying for the end. The faces of the visitors are not triumphant in the cause though grieving in their personal loss. They are just the faces of those who lost a loved one.

So whoever you are - Indian, Pakistani, Chinese, French, American - whatever you may be. Next time you see a dead soldier being taken to his or her grave, stand up and stay silent for a minute. You owe them that much.