Aldridge to Sivry; the long road

The Grave of James Frost from Aldridge, in Sivry, Belgium

There are days in your life when you make memories that you know will last for the rest of your life. Such a day for me and for Aiden, happened on Sunday 2 December 2018.

The story of that day starts over a hundred and twenty years before when James Frost was born in Aldridge. I wrote about him here. His life ended when he was mortally wounded on the outskirts of a tiny village in Belgium called Sivry. I now know that James wasn't the last casualty of the carnage of WW1. Although he was mortally wounded just a few minutes before the Armistice on 11th November 1918 he didn't die until a few hours later, having been taken into Sivry and cared for by the villagers there until he breathed his last.

Sivry was the most eastern point on the Western Front that the Commonwealth and Allied armies reached by the Armistice. On the edge of the village are Martinsart Woods. Here, after WW1 stood a gun, a memorial, that was a gift from British Brigadier General Guy Charles Williams to the village. The gun had been captured by 'C' Company, 9th Battalion Manchester Regiment at dawn on 18th December 1918. Unfortunately when the Germans once again invaded during WW2 they took the gun, so it was replaced after the war by a military museum in Belgium, where it stood until it was stolen in 2009! 

Sivry laid to waste

Sivry had suffered terribly when it was invaded by the Germans on 25/26 August 1914. The village was set ablaze, virtually destroyed and eleven innocent civilians were executed. You can imagine how the villagers felt when four years later four companies, A, B. C and D of the 9th Battalion Manchester Regiment made their way to, into and eventually away from Sivry. Liberation!

The villagers wanted to build a memorial where the gun had once stood to explain what had happened at the beginning and end of WW1. James Frost, my Father's first cousin was the only British soldier to die in Sivry and so part of the memorial was to commemorate him and his comrades of the 9th Battalion Manchester Regiment. A web of emails was sent out and eventually through a distant relative Martin Gilbert, contact was made with me. This is why we happened to be in Sivry.

In the kitchen

Bernard Counen is a wonderful man. He has carried out all the research that enabled the story to be told and he has been meticulous in that research and in telling the story. So it was on Sunday morning, Aiden and I found ourselves sitting in the kitchen of Bernard's lovely 17th century house right opposite the church in the centre of Sivry, with Bernard, his beautiful wife and the delightful Louise who acted as a translator for us all. She had to work very hard! We were received as old friends and made to feel so very welcome. Coffee, pink champagne and an extremely tasty tarte, hand made by Mme Counan were all consumed as we chatted amiably about Bernard's research, WW1, the village, politics, Brexit and of course James. 

The grave of James Frost

We then went to visit and pay our respects at the grave of James. The cemetery is a municipal one and is kept in a beautiful condition by the local people. There are no weeds, no rubbish. We could learn a lot from the villagers of Sivry. There near the centre lies James. A solitary CWGC grave lying very, many miles from any other such grave and even further from Aldridge. 

I laid our wreath, to lie next to one laid a couple of weeks ago by one of James's nieces, planted a cross sent by  Aldridge local historian Sue Satterthwaite (who has placed many crosses over the years on the graves of men from Aldridge who lie at rest far from home) and also planted two of the red poppies, which so recently had been part of the Field of Remembrance in Poppy Road, so that James had a little bit of home right next to him. It was emotional for me, honouring this young man, my kin, who had died so very far from home in the last minutes of WW1, a sacrifice too far perhaps?  His memory has been kept alive by the villagers of Sivry all these years and I give grateful thanks to them and to Bernard for looking after him and telling his story.

The crossroads were James was mortallly wounded

We then made our way out of the village to a crossroads. It was on this spot  that James had received his fatal injuries. A little way down the road is the Martinsart Memorial and through the middle of the road runs a line. To one side going back towards where James was injured is where the British and Commonwealth forces in the form of the 9th Battalion Manchester Regiment, had reached on their final push. To the other and dipping down before rising on a long climb to a summit, is where the Germans were defending their positions and from where the shells and bullets were fired just minutes before the Armistice.

The Line and The Martinsart Memorial

I stood at that line for a while, looking left and right, imagining what had been happening on 11/11/1918. The noise, the pain and finally for those who survived the blessed relief at the Armistice just a very short while later.

We looked at the memorial, the panels that explain the full story and reflected on events then and since then. I thought about those young men of the 9th Battalion Manchester Regiment in the last throes of the final battle before the Armistice. I thought about the villagers of Sivry who had suffered so much pain and heartache when their village was all but destroyed when invaded in 1914 and of the eleven who were brutally executed for no reason whatsoever and I thought about James. James was a village boy and it gave me some comfort that although his end was violent and so terribly unnecessary in its timing, that he lies so far from home, he is at rest in a small village not unlike the one he came from, cared for and respected by the generations that followed and not forgotten.

And once again I thought of war and its dreadful futility, waste and the suffering it brings to all involved and especially The Great War, a war that started because of quarrels and alliances between families and governments, not unlike the playground squabbles we encounter as children, that got terribly out of hand. 17 million people died in The Great War. James and those eleven villagers were part of that horrifying number.

The day was a good one despite being tinged with the sadness of the past. Good because we experienced such a warm welcome and made new friends. We shall return.

If ever you are in the south of Belgium I urge you to visit the Sivry-Rance area. It is a pretty one, undulating hills, pretty villages, lots of farms. It's not unlike England. The people of the area are friendly and welcoming. And if you do go, stop at the roadside of the Martinsart Memorial, think about the locals and their suffering during WW1 and perhaps pop by the cemetery and lay a poppy next to James.