Yesterday, 100 years ago…

… and about 180 miles away from where I live, across the southern downlands of England, the English Channel ( La Manche - vive la difference) and northern France, and just north of a marshy languid river called the Somme occurred the worst day of fighting ever suffered by the British army.  On the 1st July 1916 there were 60,000 British and Commonwealth casualties with 20,000 soldiers killed. The French ‘only’ took 1500 casualties that day (but were heavily engaged in a terrible, long running, battle further south at Verdun at the same time - the reason for the Somme attack being launched).  German casualties were estimated at 10-12,000 that day.  

Yesterday, 100 years later and 180 miles from that battlefield, by complete chance, I came across a pair of poppies growing in meadowland and took a photograph.  

A very small memory to those British, Commonwealth, French and German soldiers who fell that day and to the many others that fell on so many other days of that war. A salutary lesson, that we seem to have temporarily forgotten in recent weeks, as to why nationalistic pride is the poorest of substitutes for strong, deep and abiding relationships with your neighbours.