Me... and one other

I have extinguished  my candle that burned for one hour. I looked from my window, illuminated by a single candle to see how many others in my location had lit a candle with lights out, to commemorate the onset of the Great War. Just one other so far as I could see. Most houses had lights blazing... I am saddened by this. So many people who could not be bothered to recognise the significance of this occasion. How many of them I wonder do not have a distant relation who fell in this pointless war. Look around you at war memorials. So many young men killed in action.

Does it mean nothing to you?

A Single Candle...

..... burns in my window and will do from 10:00pm to 11:00pm. The lights are off in my house as they were 100 years ago. Foreign Secretary Edward Gray said on 4th August 1914: "the lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime". I burn a single candle in my window to commemorate the beginning of the insanity of The Great War, a war that could have been avoided with diplomacy.

A war that cost the lives of so many including my great-uncle, the brother of my maternal grand-mother. Private Sydney Arthur Watts of the East Kent Regiment (The Buffs) killed on the 2nd December 1917 at the Battle of Cambrai. He was 22 years of age.

I have the cap badge of my great-uncle passed on to me by my grandmother many years ago.

It was returned to my family in 1920. I have to reckon it is a facsimile as his remains were never identified and  probably buried on the battlefield. His name appears on The CAMBRAI MEMORIAL that commemorates more than 7,000 servicemen of the United Kingdom and South Africa who died in the Battle of Cambrai in November and December 1917 and whose graves are not known. Nevertheless, the cap badge is a treasured possession.

The Cambrai Memorial

My candle burns for you, great-uncle Sydney Arthur Watts.....