FIELD OF TEARS
72,396 figures in memory of those killed at Somme whose bodies were never found
FADING into the distance, a sea of white shrouded figures puts the immense scale of the slaughter into humbling perspective.
Each of the 72,396 tiny bodies, laid out in 388 rows, represents a British or Commonwealth serviceman killed at the Somme who has no known grave.
The display in their honour, at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, east London, was commissioned to mark 100 years since the end of the First World War.
In total around 600,000 Allied and 400,000 German troops were killed or wounded at the Somme between July and November 1916.
Five years in the making, every one of these 12-inch plastic figures of the missing was covered and bound in a hand- stitched calico shroud by artist Rob Heard.
Twenty-four troops from the 1st Battalion East Anglian Regiment began laying out the bodies on Monday, using tape measures to space them evenly. They now cover an area as long as one-anda-half football pitches and nearly 100ft wide in the shadow of the giant observation tower designed by Sir Anish Kapoor. There are so many figures they could fill the neighbouring 57,000-seat London Stadium, home of West Ham United, and more than 15,000 would still be left.
Yesterday the final figure was laid by Sally Nicholson, whose great-great-uncle Lance Corporal Sidney Nicholson, of the 21st Battalion King’s Royal Rifle Corps, was killed in action at the Somme on October 7, 1916, aged 26.
The seventh of ten children, he was an accountant clerk and had a fiancee called Hilda.
Miss Nicholson, 34, a primary school teacher from Northampton, said: ‘As a family, we have always known what happened to Sidney. But to see all these 72,000plus figures laid out brings home just what a devastating event the war was for a whole generation.’
All 72,396 soldiers’ names are engraved on the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme in France. The majority were British, but they also include 829 South African infantrymen and a small number from the US, New Zealand, Australia and Canada.
It took artist Heard around 15,000 hours to bind the figures and, if laid end to end, they would stretch nearly 14 miles.
He said: ‘I hope the sight of the figures, both individually and collectively, presents a poignant and provocative experience for the viewer, providing a moment for reflection on the physical reality of war.’ The Shrouds of the Somme display opens to the public today and runs until November 18.
French President Emmanuel Macron has praised a First World War general who later collaborated with the Nazis. Speaking on a six- day battlefields tour, Mr Macron said Marshal Philippe Petain had been a ‘great soldier’ before he made ‘fatal choices’.
Petain was convicted of treason after the war and jailed.