A son of old England ... and a heart of oak
Long ago, in a time now almost beyond living memory, a young Warwickshire man answered his country’s call and exchanged the rolling hills of his native county for the green fields of France. It was a familiar story, enacted in towns and villages the length and breadth of England. For Frank Sutton had been sent with his regiment to the Western Front in the spring of 1916 to take part in the “big push” aimed at ending the First World War and forcing the Germans back to Berlin.
Except that it didn’t quite work out like that. For the looming battle in which Grenadier Guardsman Sutton would soon take part was destined to go down as the worst disaster in British military history.
The Somme. More than just a name, this word has become a bugle call of valour, sacrifice and a lingering sadness… a word of just one syllable, possessing an awful resonance that reverberates down the decades and up to the present day.
The struggle which raged across this area of Picardy that fateful year would claim many thousands of British lives. And among those legions of the lost was Frank Sutton, of School Street, Churchover, north Warwickshire.
Nearly a century after the guns fell silent, I am walking the woods near the small village of Thiepval. It stands on the low ridge that would dominate much of the Somme battle during that fateful summer. Dusk is falling, but I can easily make out the towering monument that carries the names of thousands of men who died in the great battles of that year and who have no known grave. The tablet for the Grenadier Guards is easily found, just on the right at about head height. And there, sure enough, is the name I have been looking for... that of Private Frank Sutton.
Frank was 27 when he was killed in one of those bloody but unremarkable — by Somme standards — minor actions that proliferated as the main offensives found themselves locked in the attrition that has come to personify the carnage of the war to end all wars. He may have been killed by rifle, machine gun or shellfire. In any event, it was probably an explosion of some sort that ensured his body would not be found in time to establish identification.
Perhaps Frank now lies under one of the many gleaming white Portland gravestones inscribed “known unto God”. Or maybe his remains are still waiting the turn of a farmer’s plough to disturb them from their eternal rest.
But we will never know. For the years have put their seal on the fate of Private Frank Sutton, a soldier of the British Army’s premier regiment, who at some stage in early 1916 bade farewell to his family in leafy Warwickshire, England, never to return.
But wait. He will be symbolically returned to the village of his birth in some way. For I have a plan…
I pick up an acorn from the woodland floor and place it in my overcoat pocket. This seed of the oak will accompany me back to England, and eventually to Frank’s village. The tree that will spring forth will be an oak born of the soil formed by the dust of countless soldiers
who died in a war that has all but faded from living memory. This will be Frank’s homecoming.
The months fly past. Nearly a century since the Somme campaign erupted along those few battered miles of Picardy countryside, the acorn, placed in a pot in my garden in Worcester, has germinated. Although it appears slightly different from the British variety, it’s unmistakably an oak, spindle stalk already boldly showing those familiar serrated-edged leaves. The church council has given me permission to plant the sapling in the churchyard. In years to come, the tree will serve as a living memorial to the village lad who left his native heath so many years ago, never to return.
It is now 18 months later and that day has finally come. For I’m in Churchover, about to fulfil the promise I had made to Frank Sutton at Thiepval on that freezing cold Armistice weekend. It’s as if he’s beside me as I walk down School Street and past my old home Woodbine Cottage, where his relatives the Hirons family had lived for generations.
What’s more, I’m sure he would still have recognised the village. Like all country boys — me included — Frank no doubt swam and fished in the nearby River Swift and received his education at the village school. He would also have known the rook spinneys, fields and barns… run down the lane, helped the local farmers at harvest time, maybe occasionally scrumping apples and plums. Again, just like I did.
I reach the horse chestnut — the “cobby tree” — on the village green and remember an earlier journey with the precious acorn lodged safely in my pocket, recalling the names of places that are still capable of sending a shudder down the collective spine. Albert, Bapaume, Arras, Peronne, Douai... each one carries a sharp ring of tragedy.
Yes indeed. Frank Sutton has come home at last, and in a sense, so have I. For only time and distance separates our respective lives… there but for the grace of God was Frank Sutton condemned to the Somme rather than me. Epilogue: John Phillpott planted the oak sapling (above) in memory of Private Frank Sutton at a village ceremony. It is now thriving in the churchyard of Holy Trinity, Churchover, standing as mute witness to a fellow Warwickshire lad who left his native land long ago and now spends eternity in some corner of a foreign field that is forever England.