During the summer of 2022 my son and I visited the battlefield of Loos in northern France. My Great Grandfather was killed on the 25th September 1915 attacking with the Royal Warwickshire Regiment near the small village of Hulluch. His regiment endured bisecting machine gun fire from a number of German positions and were completely decimated. They took their objective of the quarries but were severely mauled. At the roll call on the 26th September out of the 930 odd men who started the attack, less than 200 were still alive. It was an eerie sensation walking across no man’s land in what would have been my great grandfathers footsteps. It was a calm and sunny day, and the birds were singing.
About half way across no man’s land I stopped for a moment and really took the time to listen. I may have been mistaken but in that moment, for a few seconds, I am sure I could hear the wail of shells, the staccato of machine gun fire, and the screams of the wounded.
