A Remembrance for the Grandfather I Never Knew.

Frederick Burden, seated, with an unknown soldier.

Today, 11^th November 2012, is Remembrance Sunday, one of those few occasions when Armistice Day actually falls on a Sunday.

I’d like to take this opportunity to say something relating to my paternal grandfather, and the trip my wife, Valerie, and I recently took to France in order to see the monument in Arras, where his death is commemorated.

Frederick Burden, born in Sculcoates, Kingston-Upon-Hull on 14^thSeptember 1886, was one of a large family. He left school at 13 and trained as a plumber. Not much is known about him or his life, as he died before any of his 3 children, Dorothy, Vera and Ken, could get to know him. This fate was later echoed by my own experience of my father, Ken, who died a little over 2 weeks before I was born.

Frederick joined up to serve in the First World War and fought in France with the 1^st East Riding Field Company, which later became the 529^thField Coy of the Royal Engineers, part of the 3^rd Division. On 9^thApril 1917, the Company was engaged in the Battle of Arras and became part of the VI Corps, Third Army. Frederick died during the battle, on 18^thJune 1917, and his body was never recovered. As a result, after the war, he was commemorated, along with others of his Company, on the Arras Memorial:

WE WILL REMEMBER THEM

Those of the 529th (East Riding) Field Company Royal Engineers who died 18th June 1917 with no known grave:

Leonard Alker, 438594.

Frederick William Barnaby, 474333, age 26

Frederick Burden, 474500, age 30

Walter Carmichael, 474562, age 33

Charles Maurice Steele 474102, age 19

William Galpin, 474387, age 20

John William Jones, 177715, age 36

Joseph Henry Parkin, Second Lieutenant, age 29

Robert Pickard Sharp, 474636

Ken Burden

Florence with Vera, Dorothy & Ken.

My own father, the youngest child, was probably at least held by Frederick, when he came home on leave a short time before the battle that claimed his life. Ken was born 16^th January 1916 and died 23rd April 1948. Frederick’s eldest daughter, Dorothy, was born 11th February 1912 and died in 2001. Vera, the middle child, was born 15^th December 1913 and now lives in Southampton. It was partially on Vera’s behalf that we went to France, as she’d never had the opportunity to see the memorial herself and, rapidly approaching her 100^th birthday, is unlikely to do so. Of course, even Dorothy was only 5 when Frederick died, so none of the children had any recollection of their father. And his widow, Florence, who he married in 1910, died in 1958.

Vera

Dorothy’s son, Charles Hunter, started some family research a few years ago and set up a website in memory of our grandfather at http://www.hunt.karoo.net/  And it was through Charles, via Friends Reunited’s Genes Reunited site, that I discovered the existence of my Aunt Vera some few years ago. It turned out she’d been trying to find me. I suspect my mother’s death, when I was aged 16, and my frequent moves around the country had made this search rather difficult.

Outside the Monument.

The Memorial at Arras bounds the eastern side of the earlier Fauberg D’Amiens Cemetery, where 2,681 servicemen are buried, and records the names of 35,700 servicemen and a further 1,000 airmen, all without known graves. Designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, and commissioned by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, the Memorial itself is an austere, sober, but rather beautiful stone monument to all these deaths.

Looking along the Memorial Bays.

We visited in September this year on a day when the heavens had decided to weep, the winds to gust fitful and strong. The walk from the railway station, where we’d journeyed from Paris, was wet and wild. It surprised us that there were no directions from there to the monument, but we’d brought maps and found it easily enough.

The open fronts of the tall arches occasionally allowed in drenching rain as we sought out the relevant bay where we could find Granddad’s name. But a quick look in the register, housed in a small cabinet, led us where we needed to go. The names are carved into the stone and the years have softened the letters a little so that they blend with the background. But we found Frederick’s name and spent some time in silent contemplation of a life about which we know so little; a life ended too soon in the madness of war.

There is a visitors’ book and I was able to make a short entry on behalf of ourselves and of Aunt Vera.

Rows of graves

We ventured out amongst the graves for a sortie between blustery showers but quickly returned to cover as the unseasonal weather continued. We met a young couple from Colchester, Essex, who’d made the visit simply out of interest and to pay their respects to these unknown heroes. And we were able to guide a small group from Birmingham who were having difficulty identifying the bay in which their relative was commemorated.

Frederick's name on the Memorial

The whole place has an air of solemn sadness about it, yet manages to convey a feeling of hope for the future in its tall open arches of pale stone. We were glad to have managed the visit and both felt that it, alone, had made our trip to France worthwhile.

Pointing out the Inscription

Our walk back to the railway station took us through the Place de la Victor Hugo, where we followed a French woman out of the lashing rain into the Peter Pan Brasserie, a proper French Café. There, the patron, who spoke no English, and Valerie, whose French is much better than my few words, managed to organise a hot meal for us, accompanied, of course, by a glass of real French red table wine.

On the TGV train back to the Gard du Nord in Paris, the weather slowly improved and, once out of the station, we found ourselves in such bright warm sunshine that we climbed to Sacre Coeur and walked through Montmartre and along the wide avenues until we reached our hotel near the Arc De Triomphe.

A trip worth making for us, and a good day.

Florence Barker, his wife.

Remembering the dead of those appalling wars is often seen as a duty, but, when there’s a personal element, the whole process becomes far more real. Our visit to the Arras Memorial and our short sojourn of contemplation over Granddad, Frederick Burden, will live with me long. Each Armistice Day, I’ll have more reason to spend those two short minutes in silent thought and thanks for those heroes who gave their lives to ensure a safe world so that we now live in freedom.

Commemorative Death Penny

We will never know the exact circumstances of his death; whether it came swift, or in slow agony, whether he died alone under the bullet of a sniper or with others of his Company, victims of a shell. But of one thing we can be confident, since he was posthumously award the Death Penny, inscribed with his name and the words, ‘He Died For Freedom And Honour’, that he died with courage. This small coin came with a note saying "I join with my grateful people in sending you this memorial of a brave life given for others in the Great War. George R J."

Along with all those other men commemorated at the Arras Memorial, and many others in France, Europe, and the whole world, he died fighting in defence of a better future for his family. That other men, and it is always men, caused the conflict that resulted in his death is a matter of great shame for humankind. Whether such violent conflict will ever be eradicated from our race is uncertain. But those of us who remain, those of us provided with a promise of long life and freedom by those who to kept us free, must strive to ensure we make full use of our opportunities. We must live our lives in celebration of the bravery of such men as Frederick Burden, the grandfather I never knew.

Thank you, Granddad Frederick, I Will Remember You.

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The Pitfalls of Stereotyping.

A multinational crowd in Paris, taken from the Eifel Tower.

You do it; you know you do. We all do, usually without realising it. We have a tendency to put all people from a nation, class, occupation or whatever into the same pot and accuse them all of the same faults. It’s a form of laziness, sometimes a simple resort to shorthand because we find it too onerous to look beneath the surface, sometimes because we lack experience, sometimes because our circle of friends and acquaintances simply isn’t wide enough.

Here, today, I want to look at the way we, as writers, can easily be persuaded into making our characters into stereotypes; specifically, national stereotypes. Of course, what we should strive for is the archetype instead, if we are attempting to portray a ‘type’ at all.

So, let’s start by understanding what a stereotype actually is. My SOED(Shorted Oxford English Dictionary - 2 large authoritative volumes for those who don’t know), my personal bible for definitions, defines the noun, for the purposes of this piece, as follows: A preconceived , standardised, and oversimplified impression of the characteristics which typify a person…often shared by all members of a society or certain social groups; an attitude based on such a preconception. Also a person…appearing to conform closely to such a standardised impression.

And, because it’s germane, let’s also look at what inspired me to post this today. My wife and I have just (Tuesday 2nd October) returned from a 10 day holiday in France. It’s a country I’ve not visited before, so my expectations of the people were formed by impressions from friends and colleagues. Now, it’s well known that the Brits and the French aren’t natural buddies. They’re said to consider us conservative, dull and uncultured. We, especially the English, apparently consider them arrogant, dirty, sexually predatory and unwelcoming to strangers.

 

But, Paris is as cosmopolitan as any major city so I also expected to meet people of many other nations. I wasn’t disappointed. We were greeted at Charles De Gaul Airport by a charming Frenchman, who drove us to our hotel in the city, speaking excellent English and quietly informative. The receptionist, Karolina, was a pretty, efficient, charming and multilingual Polish girl who greeted us warmly and answered all our questions with knowledge and confidence. The lady who prepared breakfasts and cleaned the rooms was a black Frenchwoman, with no English, who smiled and greeted us with warmth.

We’d booked an all day walking tour of the city and found the French staff at Cityrama helpful and competent with no trace of the arrogance they should have displayed with their superior knowledge. Our guide for the day was Chantal, a charming mature French lady who conducted the tour with skill, humour and encyclopaedic knowledge, shepherding our small group of five around the crowded Louvre, Eifel Tower and Notre Dam with casual expertise and patient attention to our varied needs. The group consisted of my wife and I, both from the north of England, an English woman from London and an American couple from a small town near Cincinnati, Ohio. The latter pair, who made no effort to speak even a greeting in French, could have impressed me with an idea of Americans as being selfish, self-important, inconsiderate, grouchy, complaining, demanding and generally rude. However, not only was this initial impression softened slightly during the day by the addition of a glimpse of inappropriate humour from the man, who seemed to think it okay to mock the armed guards patrolling the Eifel Tower, much to the distress of his wife, but also by his willingness to engage our lone black English lady in conversation.

It helped modify my first impressions of Americans that we sat next to another couple, from Texas, in the first floor restaurant at the Tower (lunch there was part of the package), and they proved charming and interesting neighbours with no trace of the gung-ho attitude displayed by our tour companions. When they left and were replaced by a couple from Washington State, my impressions were further improved due to their quiet and almost shy responses to our conversation.

I could go on to describe the French staff at the Tower restaurant (all charming), the Italian staff at the restaurant where we ate one evening (also charming), the Japanese group who shared our carriage on the train from Paris to St Raphael (amusing, multilingual and helpful), the French taxi driver who waited exactly as arranged via my pigeon-French emails to collect us for our ride to St Maxime and proved to be friendly and welcoming, and the various groups and couples we met on walks, boat trips and in restaurants - Swiss, German, Australian, English and French. But I think you get the picture.

Perhaps the one fly in the ointment, for the French, was the utter lack of customer care shown by the owners of the holiday resort where we spent our week in St Maxime. We were greeted there by an envelope stuck on the outside of the door of the reception point. An inadequate map directed us to our accommodation, where we were expected to make our own beds, and where there was nothing in the way of a welcome pack - no food or drink to refresh the weary travellers, not even any paper in the toilet, and no information about where we might buy such items. This theme extended throughout the week, with an early morning meeting demanded for the following morning, which we attended but for which they failed to show up. This was followed by a departure, where we were expected to allow an inspection prior to leaving, for which they also failed to arrive as arranged, leaving us concerned in case we couldn’t finalise things before the taxi arrived to take us to Nice Airport. As it happened, both these failures were dealt with efficiently and in a friendly manner by two English maintenance men who happened to be on duty, cleaning the swimming pool, at the times.

If I’d based my impressions of the French on the behaviour of the owners of that complex I would have left the place with a very different impression from the one I gleaned by contact with many other people. And that’s my point: apologies for the convoluted trip to arrive here.

If we, as writers, have no contact with the people about whom we write, it’s clear that we can’t rely on the impression provided by minimal contact with a few representatives of a nation or on information given by friends and acquaintances, no matter how well-meaning. The popular habit of labelling people from other countries as if they were all the same is patently absurd. The world, as a whole, seems to regard the French as arrogant, Germans as aggressive, Americans as obsessively self-important, Italians as incurable Lotharios, the Swiss as boring and the English as dull and repressed. If, as writers, we employ such lazy categorisation to describe fictional characters, we do the citizens of the whole world a serious disservice.  

People are different or the same according to our own perceptions, ideas, philosophies and personalities. Whilst the placing of a descriptive label on a whole nation may be considered acceptable for everyday reference (and I don’t think it is), it’s certainly not a satisfactory way for an author to represent a character. If I’ve learned anything about the peoples of various nations it’s that they’re all as complex and individual as we are ourselves. It’s an insult to make a box, label it ‘French’ and stick inside it every person from that nation, unless, of course, it’s a shorthand joke intended to create humour rather than offence.

We’re more than the seed of the country of our birth, however proud, or otherwise, we may be of that origin. Americans are more than America with its brash, overconfident, hypocritical, Bible-bashing, superior and dominating world image. Germans are more than Germany and its efficient, calculating, aggressive, bullying and precise global persona. And the English are more than England with its quaint, bumbling, reserved, atheistic and self-effacing world picture. Each nation is seen as a specific type by every other nation and these types differ according to which nation is describing which: a proof, if ever one were needed, of the inaccuracy of such stereotyping.

So, when you decide to make your villain an Englishman, your business tycoon an American, your lusty lover an Italian, your artist a Frenchman or your engineer a German, please call to mind the simple fact that people are individuals first and national types, if at all, a long way down the line. You’ll make your writing so much more real and accessible and, perhaps more importantly for a writer, you might even collect some foreign friends and readers along the way. 

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The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas, Reviewed

I read this classic on my Kindle whilst holidaying in Paris and the South of France, which proved serendipitous, as the bulk of the action takes place in these two locations. In fact, I recognised many of the places referred to in the book, as I toured.

A great tome of a read, it gripped me from the start and held my attention throughout, in spite of the often flowery descriptive prose, authorial intrusion and sometimes obtuse classical references.

Dumas draws the central character, Edmond Dantes, later the eponymous count, with a fine and sympathetic pen. The young man’s utter innocence is beautifully depicted as is his fall through bad luck into catastrophe. But his rise from near death and subsequent search for justice and revenge, acting as an agent of God, is sublime writing.

The author is, of course, writing his fable in France close to the time of Napoleon and his rise, fall and regaining of power. The Catholic faith is a deep and constant influence on the actions, thoughts and emotions of the novel’s characters. It is also a profound driver of the author’s philosophy and is often a subtle enough influence to deceive the writer into a false impression of his own impartiality.

The language is, of course, picturesque, detailed and full of allusion, as you would expect of a novel written in and for an age when readers had more leisure time and actively sought such full narrative form. Dumas often uses fifteen words where today’s readers would be content with four.

But the narrative fits the action, the period and the characters. This is deservedly a literary classic and those whose experience of the tale is limited to the distortions of Hollywood and the many adaptations (I except the brilliant 13 part series produced by BBC TV in the 1960s) will be unaware of the great humour and satire displayed by the written text.

This fable of man’s desire to usurp the role of Fate, God, or whatever other disinterested mechanism for corrective justice you envisage, is not an easy read. But it rewards the attentive reader with its ready exposure of both the dark and lighter side of human behaviour. It explains aspects of history, particularly French history, which might otherwise remain obscure. And it deals with ideas, themes and philosophies that might be imagined more modern than they are in fact.

I happily recommend this book, well aware that its length and content may make it appear too daunting to those modern readers reluctant to venture beyond the boundaries of the genre with which they are comfortable and familiar. Should you get the opportunity to read this, I urge you to do so. You won’t be disappointed.

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Stuart's Daily Word Spot (Antonyms): Laborious/Easy

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Laborious/Easy

Laborious: adjective - assiduous, industrious, hard-working; characterized by or involving labour or exertion; necessitating labour in execution.

Easy: adjective - comfortable, quiet, tranquil; characterized by ease or rest; conducive to ease or comfort; an action or task that can be completed with little effort.

'As the eldest daughter, Dubaku, was forced into the laborious task of providing water for the whole family by walking two miles each way to the well, carrying two ewers, four times every day.'

'Fadil led an easy life, as a married man with three wives and seven daughters, he had nothing to do all day but sit and talk with his contemporaries, whilst the women did all the work and kept him fed and comfortable.'  

1431 - King Henry VI of England was crowned king of France; just think, if subsequent wars hadn't intervened, the English and French would now be a single nation!

1631 - Mount Vesuvius, Italy erupted, destroying 6 villages and killing 4,000 local inhabitants. It was this eruption that led to the discovery of Pompeii. There is strong evidence to suggest it will erupt again in the near future, which, with over 2,000,000 people living within the immediate vicinity, could cause significant loss of life.

1653 - Oliver Cromwell was sworn in as English Lord Protector, ostensibly replacing the late King Charles I as head of the nation. As usually happens with leaders, he quickly forgot his dislike of dictatorship and became a tyrant.

Stuart's Daily Word Spot: Discombobulate

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Discombobulate:  verb- North American slang: upset, disturb, or disconcert.

'Frances was frequently discombobulated by the manic antics of Francis, causing her to fret and panic.'

5^th December 771 - Charlemagne became the sole King of the Franks following the death of his brother, Carloman.

5^th December 1349 - 500 Jews of Nuremberg were massacred during the Black Death riots
5^th December 1360 - The French Franc was created, only for it to be replaced by the Euro in 1999.

Stuart's Daily Word Spot: Abellio

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Abellio: One more in my occasional series illustrating that the world has and has had any number of gods for people to worship.

Abellio was worshipped in the Garonne Valley in Gallia Aquitania, which is now southwest France, and is primarily known by inscriptions discovered at Comminges. Little is known about this god, but it seems he may have been a god of apple trees. How very specific some of these ancient deities seem to have been.

Some scholars suggest that Abellio is a rendering of Apollo, who was called Abelios in Crete and Apello by the Italians. They believe that the deity is the same as the Gallic Apollo mentioned by Caesar.  In common with so many early deities, the actual origin of this god seems obscure. Such is the fate of gods who fail to come up with the goods for those who worship in the hope of reward, I guess.

Stuart's Daily Word Spot: That or which?

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That or which?

Much has been said and written about the usage of these two words and I could spend paragraphs in explanation. However, for most purposes the following illustration should suffice. I'll refer you to Fowler or your favourite grammarian for a more detailed exposition.

'That' is used in a restrictive sense; i.e. it identifies one object among many, pointing out the item that has a specific characteristic. So, 'A mini-skirtthat is short…' tells the reader that you are referring to the one skirt, amongst the many, that is notable because of its lack of length. It's probably worth pointing out here that there is no comma dividing the object from the description.

'Which', however, is used in a non-restrictive way; i.e. it points to a single item possessing the specified quality. So, 'A mini-skirt, which is short…' tells the reader that the skirt is short, without comparing it to any other. Note also that the object and its description are separated by a comma.

So, to enlarge on the examples in a way that will hopefully illustrate the point more fully:

'A mini-skirt that is short is bound to draw more male eyes than a mini-skirt of normal length.'

'A mini-skirt, which is always short, will cover very little of the legs.'

In the first example, if the words 'that is short' are excluded the sentence has a different meaning. The restrictive clause 'that is short' is crucial to the real meaning of the sentence.

But, in the second example, if the words 'which is always short' are missed out, the sentence means the same thing. The non-restrictive clause'which is always short' merely adds a bit of information to the sentence without altering its meaning.

Probably, therefore, the easiest way to remember when to use 'that and when 'which' is more appropriate, is to decide whether you could ditch the clause. You can ditch the 'which' but lose the 'that' and you'll look a prat.

27 September 1988 I married my wonderful wife, Valerie. We've been very happy ever since.

27 September 1981 The first TGV high speed train journey took place in France.