We Shall Remember Them

Today was Remembrance Sunday, the day the British people stand in silence in front of their TV sets, to remember the sacrifices of the war dead. The rhythms of the morning service are familiar. The Queen, wreaths of poppies, soldiers at the Cenotaph, the Bishop of London in his white cassock and red-and-black choir hood.

But before all that, two minutes' silence. The bells of Big Ben tolled eleven times.

As the bells fell silent, I looked back in my mind's eye, imagining the soldiers of World War I, black-and-white in their steel hats and gaiters, faces grainy with stubble or mud or just exhaustion.

I remember them.

"Ere, can I have a cigarette?" The voice is from a soldier on my right, with the definite twang of East End London. I turn, not quite meeting his eye, and fumble in my left top pocket for a fag. (It does not occur to me that I do not smoke, have only had six ciggies in my life, never carried a packet of fags.)

I hesitate, uncertain. A part of me feels a single ciggy is a paltry gift for a man in his position. A part of me worries about breaking the barriers of class and situation. Reality trembles on the edge of my perception.

The pack of fags I find in my hand is modern, its colors standing out against the muted palate of the vision (the colours of the Bishop of London's robes) but it feels right to hand over. I've smoked a little less than a third of them.

Now the past resumes. I walk along the trench, seeing the way the parapet sways a little to the left ahead of me, out into no-man's land. (The sky is blue above the mud, the clear hazy colour the French call horizon gray, and which Earl Haig described in his war diary on the last day of the War.)

I will only remember those details later.

Perhaps there is a tree on the horizon, or a brave hawk fluttering above.

I look down.

My revolver is in my right hand now, a heavy service Webbley with a green rope lanyard on the end. I see the scalloped trim on my left sleeve, and the three diamond buttons of my cuffs, the lighter fabric of my best-uniform breeches contrasting with the khaki jacket.

The past ends. Later, I will realise that the next sound should be the whistles, the echoing, piping signal to send the army over the top, into No Man's Land, towards the barbed wire and the Germans.

They say you wake up when you die in your dreams.

In the real world, the Two Minutes' Silence continues in crisp modern colour; I have seen the Cenotaph in tree-lined Westminster, three military flags with gilded victors' wreaths; I watch the Household Cavalry in their plumes and cloaks. A gun sounds across a London park, and the buglers blow Reveille.

It is 11:02 am.