“It still has an effect on me now. You never forget it”
NORMAN COLLINS 1897–1998
Norman gave one of the most vivid and moving accounts of the war of anyone we filmed. He had so many extraordinary stories to tell of his courage and humanity on the battlefield that we filmed him more than once. As a 19-year-old, just commissioned into the Seaforth Highlanders, he led a platoon of men into the horror of the battle of the Somme. He remained haunted by the sights he saw until he died in 1998 at the age of 100.
The memory that haunted Norman the most was when he was designated to be a burial officer after the attack at BeaumontHamel in November 1916. “I was told to collect the newly killed and I took stretcher-bearers, quite a number of whom were related to the ones who were dead – brothers, cousins – and of course they were very, very upset. As an officer, the best way of comforting the living would be to give them a stroke on the head or a pat on the back or some gesture like that: without words, comfort them without words. Afterwards I was told to go back into what had been no man’s
land and bury the old dead of the Newfoundland Regiment, killed on 1 July. The flesh had gone mainly from the face but the hair had still grown, the beard too to some extent. The rats were running out of their chests. The rats were getting out of the rain, because the cloth over the rib cage made quite a nice nest, and when you touched a body, the rats just poured out the front. For a young fellow like myself – 19 – all I had to look forward to was a similar fate. It still has an effect on me now. You never forget it.”