Known Unto God
The Somme battlefield takes you by surprise. Visitors pull into a car park in a quiet lane and wander into what looks like a leafy National Trust property. A few yards in, though, and you see the trenches. Gently undulating now, softened by time, but unmistakably the dreadful, snaking pits of our imagination. The Somme, of course, is a river: but, for the last century, a name inseparable from the battle that claimed 60,000 young British lives on its first day.
Scattered about the fields nearby are dozens of small cemeteries, of which the majority, with telling anonymity, commemorate simply ‘A soldier of the Great War’. I recently had the opportunity to visit this intense landscape for the first time and the impression made was deep indeed. Most affecting, I think, was an inscription that will be familiar to many on these nameless stones: ‘Known Unto God’. However war may distort the human image, those three words underscore that its dignity is a divine gift that even the most appalling tragedies cannot erase.
In this month of recollection, as we give thanks for all those gone before us, the idea that each of them – and us – is ‘known unto God’ is a deep consolation. May each of you find peace in this remembrance.
+Andrew Ramsbury