Last Post for World War I poet
Hundreds of Wilfred Owen fans have gathered in darkness in the early hours of Sunday morning at Forester’s House, where the war poet spent his final nights, to retrace his last steps and to hear his bugle played publicly for the first time since his death a century ago.
With their breath steaming visible in the light of head torches and frost crackling underfoot, the crowd watched reverently as musician Thoren Ferguson started the day’s events with a rendition of Flowers in the Wood on the Wilfred Owen violin, an instrument fashioned from the branch of a sycamore tree in the grounds of the Craiglockhart War Hospital, where Owen met fellow poet Siegfried Sassoon.
The onlookers descended on the French village of Ors from as far as Australia and the US to commemorate Owen’s untimely death at the age of 25, a week before Armistice Day. Among them are scholars, local dignitaries and relatives of the dozens of men from the Manchester Regiment and Lancashire Fusiliers, who died on the banks of the Canal de la Sombre a l’Oise and are buried alongside Owen.
Within the bowels of the Forester’s House is a dank, musty cellar where Owen composed his final letter to his mother on October 31 1918, and where he stole his last hours of rest.
Fiona MacDonald, trustee of the Wilfred Owen Association, and five others spent a cold and uncomfortable night in the cellar before waking at 5am for the ‘‘once in a lifetime’’ opportunity to walk in Owen’s footsteps.
‘‘It’s definitely not an occasion for celebration,’’ says MacDonald, 54, picking her way through the undergrowth. ‘‘But it is optimistic for the future of Owen and his poetry, which will be passed on through the generations to come.’’
Walking with her is Antony Fletcher, 47, who has travelled to Europe from Australia for the centenary. ‘‘My great grandfather, a Lancashire Fusilier, was gassed on the Somme,’’ says Fletcher. ‘‘I’m already feeling butterflies in my stomach. I don’t know how I’m going to react when we’re on the banks of the canal, but I will get a lot of meaning from it, that’s for sure.’’
The commemoration event has been organised by Ors Mayor Jacky Duminy, whose godfather translated Owen’s poetry to occupy himself in a German prisoner of war camp during World War II. Since discovering Owen was buried in his township in the early nineties, Duminy has held an event for the poet every year.
‘‘Owen is so loved in France; they think of him as their poet as much as ours,’’ MacDonald explains.
Owl hoots turn to cockerel crows and a hazy orange bleeds into the sky, when a firework explodes and breaks the peace. Elizabeth Owen, wife of Owen’s late nephew Peter, can’t help but draw comparisons with her relative’s closing journey. ‘‘When the first firework went off and echoed down the canal I nearly jumped out of my skin,’’ she says afterwards. ‘‘That was nothing compared to the noise there must have been when they were trying to get across the canal.’’
The fear and chill Owen would have felt is starkly apparent to Elizabeth, 76. ‘‘It was cold this morning, but this has been a warm winter so far and we’ve only just had the first shot of ice,’’ she says. ‘‘They would have been bitterly cold with nothing to warm them.’’
She continues, ‘‘We owe them so much. It’s tragic not just for Wilfred but also for the many others who died just a week before the war ended.’’
At the canal’s edge, near the place where Owen died, tears roll down cheeks as someone recites The End. The moon is reflected in the still water and mist descends on the fields.
Later, the crowd regroups around Owen’s grave in the Ors cemetery to hear Heather Madeira Ni play the Last Post on the bugle he retrieved on the battlefield from a dead German. For decades it sat unused in the Owen family’s home, but yesterday it was symbolically returned to its owner. – Telegraph Group