‘What they thought at home and what they knew at the Front’ was the theme of this special event, when representatives of the British Legion, as well as guests and friends of members joined us in St George’s Church.
Linda Hart, freelance editor, writer and lecturer, and actor Gabriel Woolf, performed a programme of poetry and prose reflecting many different aspects of the war, from the sombre thoughts of poets like Wilfred Owen and Seigfried Sassoon, to the wry humour of the ‘Wipers Times’, the newspaper produced for the soldiers ‘behind the lines’.
Some of the poems, such as Owen’s ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ and Rupert Brooke’s ‘The Soldier’, were familiar to us. But there were pieces most of us had not heard before, including extracts from the diary of Vera Brittain, ‘Spring in Wartime’ by American Sara Teasdale, and letters sent home from the Front.
Altogether a thought-provoking evening reminding us, if reminders were necessary in this 100th anniversary year, of the sacrifices made by those young men all those years ago.