At the completion of our third day we reached Fradley Junction and turned and headed back eastward. Early on our fourth day we moored at an attractive town called Alrewas, and having sought directions, set out on a ninety minute walk to the National Memorial Arboretum. We had been warned so often before leaving New Zealand about English summer rain, that we were largely under prepared for the blazing hot sun that rode overhead.
The information brochure described the Memorial as a huge park of 50,000 trees with areas dedicated to the British war dead. We looked first at the Gallipoli Campaign memorial and then followed the signs to a distant edge of the Arboretum, where we located the remembrance to the 326 soldiers “Shot At Dawn” for alleged cowardice or desertion.
Each of the men was represented by a post with his name on it, in neat rows and forming a semi-circle. In front of the posts was a statue of a young man in army uniform, blindfolded. Perhaps the blindfold was a very small mercy offered, I thought, amidst a sea of misunderstanding and harsh judgement. I read on the nearby placard that the British government pardoned the 326 men in 2006 –but did not exonerate them.
As I gazed at the statue I noted the youthfulness of the face, the look of uncomprehending fear.
Only part of one foot is seen, the other foot and leg unformed in the material of which the figure is made. A young man not yet fully emerged perhaps; how could such a youth, or indeed any man, be able to make sense of the insanity that raged around him in the form of repeated shellings and multiplying casualties? How our ethical abilities were unable to keep up with the technology of war!
Later, we were able to catch a bus back to Alrewas and to our narrowboat, to the tranquillity but not forgetting the grief.