Trench 31

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We arrived at the cemetery near Ypres and we couldn’t have picked a better day for our visit. The sky was blue, the surrounding countryside was a sea of green and the birds were in full voice. However, fifty years ago, on this same date, the day had been very different. It had taken my mother, Charlotte Anne Butler, half a century to come to terms with her loss and now she was about to attend the grave for the first time.

We pulled into the car park and sat in silence, gazing out through the window at the expanse of graves. After a while, my mother spoke.

‘I’m ready now, might as well get it over and done with eh ducky.’

She always called me ducky. Being Derbyshire born and bred, my mother called everyone ducky.

The grave was a short distance away. Its gravestone stood alongside those of many hundreds of others that signified soldiers and airmen who had given their lives. This is where he was buried. A place of peace, where just a mere fraction of Britain’s honoured dead lay resting forever.

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