He Giveth His Beloved Sleep Transcript (Scotland: A Scottish History Podcast)
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Scotland - A Scottish History Podcast
Episode 46 - He Giveth His Beloved Sleep
MICHAEL PARK: It is July 1918. A small mound of earth protrudes from the ground. It always does when you fill in a grave. At least it does when you don’t have anywhere to put the spoil because you’re digging hundreds of other graves.
Day by day, by day more bodies come in and in this oppressive heat you have no choice but to lay these poor people to rest as quickly as you can.
You hammer in another cross and wipe the stinging sweat from your eyes.
Nestled in the centre of Alexandria in the shadow of the hospital, Hadra cemetery is an oasis of green. Or at least it will be eventually when flowers are planted, white walls are built around it and the temporary graves are replaced with the gleaming white monuments made of portland stone.
Hadra Cemetery will be a little slice of paradise for commonwealth soldiers, cut down in their prime.
But not now. You check your notes and attach a name and identifier to the cross.
Row A. Grave 231. Lance Corporal Andrew Fairlie. 2nd Battalion. Black Watch Royal Highlanders.
This is Scotland, a podcast about history and where we made it. I’m Michael Park.
Andrew Fairlie is my Great Great Uncle.
He died on 13th July 1918 in hospital at Alexandria, just four months before the end of the first world war. He was 20 years old. He almost made it home.
The records of his demise are sketchy at best. Two thirds of first world war records were destroyed by a Luftwaffe bomb in 1940. That makes it hard to know what killed him.
There weren’t many major engagements in the summer of 1918 but the toll of the war was telling on the forces stationed across the Middle East and North Africa, many of which would take their rest and recuperation, or be returned wounded to Alexandria.
For Andrew’s part, he could have been wounded in the action at Arsuf on June 8th 1918 and died in hospital.
Andrew’s battalion was part of the 21st Brigade, tasked with capturing The Two Sisters - two hills a mile from the mediterranean which were being used as observation points by Turkish forces.
They were put under counterattack twice but pushed the Ottoman 7th Division back. The Turkish forces lost 127 men. 62 men from the 21st Brigade were killed, 110 were wounded.
The action was mentioned in army despatches, and if he was injured then he would likely have been taken out by troop ship to the hospital at Alexandria.
But, there’s another, more mundane explanation. The idea that it wasn’t a bullet that ended Andrew’s life, and the lives of many of his comrades.
There’s every chance that it was dysentery or some other disease - maybe even an early strain of the Spanish flu. Disease constantly swept through beleaguered troops on every front. It was one of the realities of war - the ones that nobody wrote home about
His mother, who would have received a form letter from the War Office, was probably never told exactly what happened to her son. His name is listed on Ayr’s cenotaph in Wellington Square along with another of my Uncles, Dominick Gunning, and hundreds of others young people who left home, unknowingly going to face the closest thing to hell on earth they would ever see.
Their memorials are scant consolation for lives unlived.
The repatriation of those killed in action was banned in 1915 and the ban remained in place until after the war was over, despite uproar among bereaved families, meaning that Andrew lies forever in Row A, plot 231 of Alexandria’s war cemetery.
The bereaved were able to choose the inscription on the graves, provided it was less than 66 characters. His mother requested:
HE GIVETH HIS BELOVED SLEEP
This either comes from Psalm 127:2, “It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows: for so he giveth his beloved sleep.”, or an 1844 poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, called The Sleep, which references the psalm and includes this prescient verse.
LEANNE MILNE:
What do we give to our beloved?
A little faith all undisproved,
A little dust to overweep,
And bitter memories to make
The whole earth blasted for our sake:
He giveth His beloved sleep.
MICHAEL PARK: Aside from the eternal sleep, it makes you think about the families who never knew where their loved ones died and have no permanent memorial to them.
Was it somehow a consolation to his parents that those words were inscribed on a portland stone monument looking down over his body?
Even if it was more than 4,000 miles from their home in John Street?
Even if their son was lost to a war in a land they would never get to visit.
Even if they would never get to say goodbye.
Remembrance, at least to me, is about more than just making nodding reference to the sacrifices made in the name of ‘King and Country’ and showing the ‘appropriate’ amount of respect with some token gesture.
As though millions of deaths - on all sides, in all wars - are only worthy as part of some macabre celebration of mass slaughter, designed to strengthen populist politicians and sell newspapers to those among us who think that we just don’t kill each other enough anymore.
Every one of the estimated 17 million people, many military personnel, many civilians, who died during the First World War had their own life, their own hopes, dreams, ambitions.
Some they’d realised, some - like Andrew - would never get to realise.
Some who came back, came back whole, some who came back, came back utterly shattered by the things that they saw.
Every single one of them was a human being and they all deserve their lives to mean more than just another tally mark on the count of the dead.
They deserve more than being someone’s excuse to moan about people not wearing poppies on social media. They deserve more than being used as a touchstone every time some trigger-happy politician wants to rush to war.
There’s no such thing as the glorious dead. There are only families torn apart, children left without their parents, friends left with an empty chair at the pub, towns and cities bereft of their populations.
These people meant everything to those they left behind and if those who bang the drum for military intervention every time they have the chance get their way, it could one day be your loved ones that leave you behind… because it surely won’t be theirs.
That those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it might be a tired old adage.
That doesn’t make it any less true.
SIEGFRIED SASSOON:
Sleep; and my song shall build about your bed
A paradise of dimness. You shall feel
The folding of tired wings; and peace will dwell
Throned in your silence: and one hour shall hold
Summer, and midnight, and immensity
Lulled to forgetfulness. For, where you dream,
The stately gloom of foliage shall embower
Your slumbering thought with tapestries of blue.
And there shall be no memory of the sky,
Nor sunlight with its cruelty of swords.
But, to your soul that sinks from deep to deep
Through drowned and glimmering colour, Time shall be
Only slow rhythmic swaying; and your breath;
And roses in the darkness; and my love.
Siegfried Sassoon - Slumber Song
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MICHAEL PARK: You’ve been listening to Scotland, it was written and produced by me, Michael Park and is a production of Be Quiet Media.
Additional voices in this episode were by Leanne Milne and Chris Moriarty.
The music for every episode of Scotland is by Naval Cipher Number 3, Mitch Bain, you can check out more of his work at mitchbain.bequiet.media.
Additional voices for this episode were by Jamie Mowat. Jamie does stunning illustrations for us which you can see in our episode art. See more and buy prints at tidlin - t i d l i n - .com.
Scotland is supported by Chris Lingwood and listeners like you on Patreon. You can get loads more from us for as little as two dollars at: patreon.com/scotlandhistorypodcast
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Thanks for listening, we’ll see you next time.