Tuesday 21 June 2016

Remembering them ...... 100 years after the Battle of the Somme part 3 a single flower on the war memorial*

Now I don’t pretend this photograph would pass muster in a competition.

It was taken quickly on a camera phone in between a stream of commuters coming in and out of Victoria Station.

Given the volume of people and the speed with which they were passing through it is a wonder that I was able to get it at all.

And what was remarkable was that none of them gave it a second glance.

To be fair on a different day with a tram to catch or a train to meet I might not have clocked it.

But last Sunday I did and it set me thinking who put it there.

The figure is part of the huge war memorial to the staff of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway who participated in the Great War.

I often stop and pause for a minute in front of it and will often then look at the other memorial which records the men who left Victoria Railway Station for the Front and those who returned in ambulance trains.

Just a fortnight earlier I had been in the same spot and the flower was not there nor are there any others.

It might have a very personal significance or be occasioned by the centenary of the Somme which will be upon us in July 1.

If it is the latter it will fit with the events planned across the city.

Picture; at the war memorial in Victoria Railway Station, 2016, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Remembering them ...... 100 years after the Battle of the Somme, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/remembering-them-100-years-after-battle.html

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