Hethersett a norfolk village on the web

Bea Ewart, who is a member of the Hethersett Archive Group, is helping to research details of those killed in war and commemorated on the village war memorial. Bea's grandfather, Lance Corporal George Henry Grant of the 1st Battalion Scots Guards was killed at the Battle of Ginchy on 15th September, 1916 and is remembered on the famous Thiepval Memorial in France which includes the names of those who have no known grave. Bea visited The Somme in September 2006 and wrote a poem about that visit.

The Thiepval Memorial - for those with no known grave, The Somme, France

24th September 2006

From miles around,

it towers above the fields

once gouged and ravaged

by the shards of war

blasting the land,

as if in readiness

for those who would not leave.

Their names,

cut in the stone by caring hands,

now grace its piers

for all who come to look

and take a little time

to think of who they were,

and what they might have been,

before they heard the call to arms

that drew them, like a moth to flame,

until the day when they were lost

to loved ones far away:

fallen, broken, unknowable,

lying among the splintered trees

on cratered ground

where poppies grew

next year.