The fallen heroes came back to life... only to be reclaimed by the tide
Guy Kelly joins a quietly beautiful Armistice tribute on the beaches around the British Isles
It was the most ephemeral of tributes, yet all the more poignant for it. On Sunday morning, under the cloak of darkness and scored only by the sound of waves lapping on sand, hundreds of volunteers took to beaches across the British Isles for a unique commemoration of those who gave the ultimate sacrifice.
On a day that featured countless original acts of remembrance alongside traditional Armistice Day services, Pages of the Sea, a public art project curated by Oscar-winning filmmaker Danny Boyle for the First World War centenary, saw dozens of vast “sand portraits” of casualties from the conflict etched into our coastline.
At 32 beaches – from St Ninian’s on Shetland to Porthcurno in Cornwall – volunteers created images of individuals connected to each local area. Second Lieut Walter Tull, the first black officer to command white troops, was remembered by locals in Ayr. Dr Elsie Inglis, an avowed suffragist and founder of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals, appeared on the West Sands at St Andrews, Fife.
In Redcar, North Yorkshire, Pte Theophilus Jones had his moment. He is believed to have been the first military casualty on British soil from enemy fire.
The portraits were drawn at low tide by teams of seven artists using garden tools. When they were completed hours later, crowds had moments to study the haunting faces before the seas claimed the fallen once more.
In Folkestone, Kent, where Mr Boyle saw the likeness of Lieut Wilfred Owen, the war poet, carved into Sunny Sands, the day’s events began with the pre-dawn skirl of bagpipes.
At 6am, the time at which the Armistice of Compiègne was signed 100 years earlier, a lone piper played the lament, Battles O’er, at Memorial Arch.
A mile down the coast, members of the artistic collective Sand In Your Eye, who trained all the volunteer crews, had been on the beach for hours. As they raked and plotted, deep navy clouds gave way to a powder blue sky flecked with magnificent ochre.
Then came the rain: obstinate, rascal, November rain driven horizontal by the squalls.
Still, a bit of weather never deters a Briton, and the crowds proved it: as the 60ft image of Lt Owen’s face grew clear at 9am, hundreds filled the harbour.
As Mr Boyle pointed out, Folkestone is inextricably linked with the Great War. “This was the artery through which millions of service personnel left to serve. Wilfred Owen [did] twice, never to return after the second time,” he told the BBC’S Andrew Marr Show.
Approximately 10million troops and ancillary personnel passed through Folkestone on their way to the Western Front. Lieut Owen left for a final time in August 1918 – he was
‘It was important to us to come down and be here, especially for the children. It’s a lovely and very simple idea’
killed on Nov 4. Many of yesterday’s crowd at Sunny Sands arrived via the Road of Remembrance, formerly Slope Road, where soldiers were ordered to “step short” down the steep hill to the harbour.
Others came down Tontine Street, where more than 60 civilians were killed on May 25 1917 in the first aeroplane raid ever to strike Britain.
As the tide came in around the country, people were invited on to the beaches to create their own sand portraits, using stencils. Young and old took turns with the rakes; everybody wished to leave their mark.
Louise Leszczyk travelled from Birmingham to Folkestone with her mother, Margaret, and daughters, Imogen, 14, and Holly, nine. “It was important to us to come down and be here, especially for the children. It’s a lovely and very simple idea,” she said.
Holly, who shivered in a pink hoodie but carved bravely, said: “I’m glad we came, because they fought so we could be here.”
Cpl Peter Wiltshire, 61, a Northern Ireland veteran who arrived in the uniform of the 1st Battalion The Royal Green Jackets, said: “I’ve never seen anything like this.
“It’s a brilliant idea. I cry every time I hear the Last Post, and I’m getting choked up now.”
When the rain ceased, people filled every inch of the harbour to hear a local choir read The Wound In Time, a sonnet written for the day by Carol Ann Duffy, the Poet Laureate. It was the same everywhere. Tide times meant Murlough Beach in Northern Ireland was one of the first to have a complete portrait; there, organisers estimated that more than 1,000 spectators turned out.
As the 11th hour struck at Sunny Sands, the waves had all but claimed Lieut Owen. On shores around the nation, the unforgotten faded before our eyes.
It was a solemn reminder of the evanescence of life, but if anything was proved today, it is that we will remember them.