As you get older things grow on you

As you get older things grow on you.  I don’t mean as you age, you grow fond of things.  I mean they actually take root and grow on you.  For example, hair will suddenly sprout with unexpectedly luxuriousness from your nose and other areas where it never usually appears.  It is not an endemic phenomena as normal head hair becomes fragile, thin and sparse.  It is as if a gardener formally ordered and careful with his borders has suddenly decided to fertilise everywhere but the flower gardens.  He seems to have developed a sense of humour about where he finds to place seeds.  “This will be good for a laugh!” seems to be his overall horticultural intent. 

If it were only hair, things would not be so bad.  But other skin growths seem to have caught the gardener’s sense of humour.  They appear willy-nilly on a shoulder, forearm, under an eye or the back of a hand etc.  You examine them with poor eyesight wondering what is the punch line here?  Late at night if unable to sleep, they become harbingers of death and your thoughts run amok fear filled.  Perhaps these two jokers will combine against you – the hair and the growths?  So you wage a war against the hair so that you will be able to see the other enemy.  Clear away the undergrowth so that these lumps cannot sneak up under cover so to speak.  It’s quite exhausting and becomes a war of attrition with daily battles fought to stay on top of things.  At times, eyesight failing, you want to throw in the towel it is easy to succumb to the inevitable.  This taking care of oneself requires such continual effort.

My grandfather said it was vital during the war.  Coming back from the Somme and other horrors he rarely spoke of what went on in those fields of horror.  We knew he had been mentioned in dispatches, that he had been wounded in the arm but these did not come from him.  They were either said of him or done to him.  The only thing I remember him telling me about the war was the importance of looking after your feet in the trenches.  He told of trenches filled with muddy dirty water.  Of boots and socks soaked through.  The rats were as big as cats.  He said they had to be meticulous with cleaning your feet, washing and drying them as you would a new born babe.  Being careful of creases, drying them thoroughly.  Then using only clean dry socks cover them and lace on your boots.  Any small sore spotted required immediate action.  In those damp conditions ‘foot rot’ could easily set in.  The first sign would be a numbness followed by redness and blueness.  Gangrene would follow and amputation the only solution. 

As my grandfather told of his feet care in the trenches he said how his life depended on good foot care.  This extended to his boots which were polished and heated with candles to dry and let the shoe polish penetrate properly.  Then elbow grease did the rest.  I remember how his arm flew as he beat upon the shoe to demonstrate the technique.  “You have to see your face in it”, he explained.  Of course those boots would be sodden and caked in mud again soon enough but it seemed this ritual of feet cleaning and caring for this boots were his defense against the war and the elements.  His army tunic hung in the garage for years, stiff and bloodstained with the hole in the arm where he had been wounded.

Today, I tried to find out exactly what he was mentioned in dispatches for. I know it was on the 16 March 1919 from Sir Douglas Haig.  Loads of websites offered me information, if I paid, but I refused to pay.  I eventually found Douglas Haig’s entire collection of dispatches in book form and begin to download the huge file.  I am hoping to solve this mystery that occurred almost one hundred years ago, once and for all.    I am downloading the file as I write this. 

Reading of the battle of the Somme on 1^st of July 1916 there were 60,000 casualties on the first day.  The battle raged until 18 Nov 1916 and at its end neither side had advanced any further from where they had started on day 1.  But, in that short period 1.5 million were lying in the mud dead, wounded or missing.  Perversely, I learn, that the British soldiers were ordered to go over the top and walk (not run) to the German lines, so convinced were the generals that their earlier bombardment had taken out German artillery.  They were wrong and so 60,000 men simply walked into live rounds of ammunition and got mown down.  Anyone who refused to clamber out of the trenches was usually shot by their own officers for cowardice.  In this mindless battlefield the suffering cannot be imagined nor described.  The fear and horror hard to grasp.  My grandfather never spoke of it, perhaps because there were no words.  But focused instead on the one thing, care of his feet, that sustained him through it.  After the war he returned to his quiet village corner shop.  He was  a different man.  Whatever had happened on those dreadful dying grounds had made him lose all fear.  Nothing life sent changed that.  Two customers entered his shop with guns threatening to shoot each other.  He vaulted over the counter and threw both of them out off his shop, after cuffing them both, without a seconds thought.  He had crossed a line that most of us will not cross until our deathbeds.  It’s been said by Shakespeare that

"Cowards die many times before their deaths,
The valiant never taste of death but once." 

I am curious to know what happened that had caused the mention in dispatches from the front line on the 16 March 1919.  I search the file and there is no mention of my grandfather’s name.  I check the London Gazzette that records most of the names of those mentioned but not all.  Again no success, I read that regiment diaries often contain such details and check out his regiment’s account.  How thrilling to find Benjamin Stringer mentioned in an account in Spanbroekmolen on the 4 June 1917 were he is mentioned heading of with others to attack a trench of Germans.  They killed twenty and took prisoner a German officer and 31 prisoners.  My grandfather is wounded in the fight and I realise this is the bullet hole in the arm of his jacket.  It is as if the past is here again and my grandfather is polishing his shoes to a military shine and explaining the importance of caring for feet.  Today has been epic and moving in a strange way.  As if things have come full circle and I was meant to find this today.  Life threw horrors and difficulties his way but his answer was to focus on what he could do on a daily basis to strengthen himself.  So, perhaps all of us need to find those small precious rituals that will sustain us when we face the impossible.  May you find yours!