How do you commemorate the centenary of the Great War?

The centenary of the outbreak of the Great War is fast approaching and already the books, films and documentaries have been appearing in ever greater number and will continue beyond August and right up the 100 anniversary of the armistice in 2018.*

For most of us the conflict has long since passed out of living memory, the last of my uncles to have fought in that war died in 2000, his older brother in 1990 and my grandfather in 1970.

So in a very real sense as a piece of family history it is now a remote event, more so because none of them spoke of it.

And we have very few personal items from any of them.

There is one letter from my uncle Ferguson dated December 1918 which describes Cologne and of his unit’s preparations to cross the Rhine along with a Christmas card showing a group of his regiment decked out in kilts chasing the Germans.

We also have some photographs, my grandfather’s medals, and a metal note book case emblazoned with a German cross which is a reminder that some of my family fought on the “other side.”

Only the service records of my great uncle Roger have survived and these only because he served in the Canadian Expeditionary Force and so were not destroyed during the blitz.

And that pretty much is the lot, unless you include the discharge papers of my grandfather who left the army in 1922 having served since 1916 and two letters from the War Ministry advising my great grandfather’s wife of his pension payments.

I suspect that the same is true for most families which leaves us all looking at the official war photographs, reading the war poets and visiting the memorials as the closest way we will touch that past conflict.

Which brings me back to that central question of how to commemorate those four years?  And indeed those that followed as people adjusted to peacetime with the loss of loved ones, wounds that scarred young lives and just getting by in a changed world.

All those history books and documentaries will give a context and help explain the causes of the war along with its course, the post war consequences and a sense of what was happening to those on all sides.

But as useful as these are they don’t I think get under the conflict and allow us to touch the experiences of the many that were swept up by it.

One collection that does comes from David Harrop who has been collecting the ephemera from both world wars and much else besides.

The collection includes post cards, letters photographs and the sort of souvenirs we all buy from time to time.

But what makes them remarkable is that they are the everyday objects that will have passed through households during the war and as such allow you an insight into the daily routines as well as the high dramas of life at the time.

Some of his collection is on permanent display in the Memorial Hall at the entrance to Southern Cemetery and there will also be travelling exhibitions in Southport on July 28th and Oldham on August 4th.**

Pictures; from the collection of David Harrop

*The Great War, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20Great%20War

**The Atkinson, Lord Street, Southport from July 28 and Oldham Archives, Union Street, Oldham, from August 4