Heroes honoured on the beaches
ALL around the nation, the lives of the young heroes who died in the First World War will be remembered on Britain’s beaches.
Fallen soldiers, medics, a munitions worker and the war poet Wilfred Owen will all feature in large-scale sand portraits on November 11.
The event to mark the centenary of the end of the war is the brainchild of film maker Danny Boyle. The Slumdog Millionaire director is asking people to gather at 32 coastal sites in England, Wales, Scotland, North Ireland and the Republic of Ireland on Armistice Day.
A large-scale portrait of a casualty will be drawn in the sand at each location and washed away as the tide comes in.
Owen’s will be drawn at Sunny Sands in Folkestone, Kent. The writer of anti-war poems such as Dulce et Decorum Est, he was awarded the Military Cross for gallantry before being killed in action aged 25 on November 4, 1918 – one week before the signing of the Armistice.
Blackpool beach will honour Lance Corporal John Edward Arkwright, one of the first Lancastrians killed during the war – on August 26, 1914, aged 23.
In Swansea munitions worker, Dorothy May Watson will be featured. She and her sister Mildred were killed in an explosion in July, 1917.
The Army’s first black officer Walter Tull’s portrait will be on Ayr beach in Scotland. One of the country’s first black footballers, playing for Tottenham Hotspur, he was commissioned a second lieutenant in 1917 but killed in March 1918 at Arras. Other beaches due to take part include Brancaster in Norfolk, Clacton in Essex, East Looe in Cornwall, Formby in Merseyside, Lyme Regis in Dorset, Porthmeor in Cornwall, Redcar in North Yorkshire, Roker in Sunderland and Seahouses in Northumberland.