Fields of Battle in the Park

On the warmest English Halloween on record, and the last expected lovely day, I made certain I wandered out at lunchtime and into a park, St James’s Park.  As I admired the manicured gardens along the path, I was curious to see a big square of midnight blue amidst the greenery.  As I neared, I saw it was a painting.  And behind it was another, out in mid-air.

Surprisingly, there was a whole gallery outside in the Park by the Guards Memorial across from Horse Guards Parade.  One thing I love about London is stumbling upon public art, particularly in unexpected places, and this was particularly unexpected, as rather than a statue or painted Paddington Bear, it seemed a whole art gallery had been installed in the Park but the walls and roof had fallen.   Consequently, it sucked in people like me who initially had other plans in the Park, but was charmingly part of the park, with the beautiful blue sky behind the often dramatic timber-framed images, and people stretched out on the grass beside them.

The exhibition was one of some often glorious photography of battlefields as they appear now, but with some particularly engaging and informative caption panels beneath each one.   I wandered from one picture to another, belatedly realising that there were three photographs in a triangle so I had even more to explore, and quite a few intriguing facts to learn.  The informative board beneath each picture described where the picture was taken, what battle took place there, why the subject was significant, and presented information on how local people were affected by the war at the front and at home.

‘Fields of Battle 14-18’ is a touring street gallery exhibition featuring the work of Michael St Maur Sheil, ‘based not on the horrors of war, but on how over time, nature has healed the battlefields, creating a link between the modern day and the personal dramas and stories these peaceful landscapes now hide,’ according to its website.  Michael St. Maur Sheil spent the past seven years exploring the fields of battle trying to capture the history and emotions of this dramatic period, so the project embodies the spirit of the centenary in honouring those who fought. Rather than try to explain the history of the First World War, it ‘seeks to introduce people to the subject by revealing some of the landscapes of battle and illustrating the stories of the people who experienced those battles.’  

The thought-provoking and oddly enchanting photographs showed rusty helmets on posts in Marne, France; a lovely German memorial at dusk in Ardennes, France; a giant crater at  La Boisselle, France; a German artillery turntable beautifully damp with water reflecting tall trees in a distorted circle; aerial shots of land still scarred by trenches and shell holes; the sun streaming beautifully through the trees on the marshes of the River Ancre at the Somme…..all looking innocent and lovely, but where many people struggled and died. 

One shows an  old football in a ploughed field at Loos above a caption panel about London Irish Football, telling of a Captain who had kicked a ball towards the German barbed wire to encourage his men at the Battle of the Somme, where he was killed (the ball survives in a museum). There was a glorious photo of a rainbow on a darkening day over a ploughed field in shadow in West Flanders, Belgium. Beneath it was a caption panel on explosives, with a ‘fun fact’ that when there was a shortage of artillery shells in 1917, schoolchildren hunted for conkers (Horse Chestnuts), 3,000 tonnes of which were used to make acetone for the propellant of shells and bullets.  Another oddly beautiful photograph in Flanders showed a snow-covered war graves cemetery, with a panel on how Boots, the nation’s chemists, brought out new products to aid soldiers, and displayed an old Boots poster for the Sick and Wounded Fund. Medical luxuries included brandy, cocoa, and Oxo.

A favourite for me was a spookily scenic moss-covered cemetery in a forest in France, with a sad explanation beneath it telling how most people during the war learned that they’d lost their loved one. First, there was silence in that the letters stopped.  Frankly, I’ve always found it astounding that you could send letters from foreign fields when fighting wars back then, but the panel said that letters from the trenches usually arrived within two days.  That's astonishing, given that’s how long it would take my neighbour in North Carolina to receive a posted invitation from me when I lived across the street.

Second, there would be the official notification. Apparently, only officers’ families would receive a telegram when they were killed. Other ranks’ families received a form with the appropriate words stamped coldly into the blanks. like a mortifying Mad Lib.  I suppose it was necessary given the huge numbers they sadly were having to process.  Families, we are told, had to pay for the return of any possessions.  How devastating to be too poor and thus unable to retrieve what little your loved one had when he died, giving his life for his country.  The panel mentioned that one woman wrote of receiving her brother’s cap in a folded mangled state, with a blood-stained tab of his braces. Families did not learn until after the war where—or whether—their love one had been buried.

The role of dogs and the story of Sgt Stubby is featured beneath one photograph.  Sgt Stubby was a bull terrier cross hero of the US army, a stowaway who became more decorated than his owner, wearing his medals on a specially made chamois jacket.  Highly trained dogs would carry aid to men wounded in No Man’s Land.  A War Dog Training School supplied messenger dogs, originally from Battersea Dogs’ Home, but people also donated their pets to the war effort. Which made me feel a bit uncomfortable, but I guess if your sons and brothers are out there, too…..

Carrier pigeons played an even bigger role than I imagined.  One panel told the story of the Lost Battalion in  October 1918, when 550 American soldiers were isolated and surrounded for five days in a forest by the Germans, with little shelter, water and ammunition, while under constant fire.  Air support helped 200 survive, working on coordinates delivered by carrier pigeons, and delivered the first aerial supply drop in military history.  By the end of this war, there were 22,000 pigeons in service with British forces.  One pigeon, Cher Ami, was awarded medals and her stuffed body is in the Smithsonian Institute. The board showed a sign about Regulation 21A, proclaiming that killing, wounding or molesting (?!) homing pigeons was punishable by six months imprisonment or a £100 fine (about £4K today perhaps?), and a £5 reward was offered to people ratting on pigeon shooters. 

Horses, as we know, also played a significant part in the war. They were used to tow guns and supplies before trucks were commonplace, and the British Army even requisitioned racehorses and pets.  More horses were brought in from North and South America, Spain and Portugal.  Approximately 900,000 horses and mules did not return, most having died from enemy fire, malnutrition, disease and exhaustion.  Those that survived were sold locally or destroyed, which is a cruel tragedy itself.  Meanwhile, Germany increased its ratio of horses to men by having state-sponsored stud farms.

As horses were so commonplace then, perhaps it should not have been a surprise when I read on another board that it was difficult to find men to operate tanks because few outside the ‘ruling classes’ had experience of mechanised vehicles.  It turns out that tanks even had a gender: the male tanks had the six pounder gun; the female tanks had different equipment.

One caption panel described the need for Ordnance Survey maps to help the accuracy of artillery, and also naturally to map the area.  As an example of how busy the roads around the Somme were, we are told that one point was passed in a 24-hour period in July 1916 by 26,500 men, 3756 horse drawn wagons, 5400 riding horses, 813 trucks and many more vehicles.

I learned (under another stunning photograph) about the Defence of the Realm Act 1914, nicknamed the friendlier sounding DORA, which ‘gave the Government powers to control a citizen’s life’. Along with censorship and many things we have heard about, DORA prohibited people from buying binoculars, giving bread to horses or buying brandy in a railway refreshment room.  Nor could you light fireworks (hurrah, I say, exhausted by this time of year’s constant bangs and the terror it brings to wildlife and pets) or whistle for taxis. Another new but vaguely familiar fact to me is that British Summer Time was introduced in May 1916 to save coal.

British propaganda was described on another board as having many functions including  ‘to present civilians with a Government-approved version of the war’,  with some excellent writers of stories in that vein including A A Milne, Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling and H G Wells. Anyone caught taking a photo of the war who was not an official war photographer got the firing squad.  Well, people then didn’t have a steadycam smartphone that they were prone to hold up to capture all the hideous suffering and death, so I suppose it didn’t often happen.  The gallery showed a recruitment poster ‘to the young women of London’, designed to shame them into ensuring their boyfriends were in khaki or joined the army now.  ‘If your young man neglects his duty to his King and Country, the time may come when he will neglect you’, and that they shouldn’t pity the women who were alone because they could be proud that their boyfriends were fighting for her and her country ‘and for you’.

There were panels on poets Wilfred Owen and ‘Mad Jack’, aeroplane development—initially the Naval Air Service--and monster zeppelins, all including fascinating archive photos.  I learned that a ‘brass hat’ was a high ranking officer and ‘Big Bertha’ was a name for a German artillery gun, that magnetic compasses were invented in China around 221 BC, and that the gravestones of Muslim soldiers would be angled to face east.    I learned that rum was the only alcohol given to soldiers, unless they were unlucky enough to have a teetotaller commander who would not allow it, and sometimes it was a substitute for the highly chlorinated water that had an unpleasant taste. 

One panel showed a picture of the postcard Edward Penfold had found on a dead German soldier he was burying, containing Christmas greetings from his wife, although it wasn’t translated until a century later. All that he saw during service traumatised Penfold, and he died of shock in the Blitz. Apparently, his daughter hopes one day to return the card to the German soldier’s family.

Somebody had left a paper poppy on the board about military hospitals and Shell Shock, with a local story about Ian Fraser, an MP and Governor of the BBC who was blinded in World War I and became Chairman of St Dunstan's, the charity for blind servicemen. The poppy was just beside an archive photo of J R R Tolkien, writer of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, who fought at the Battle of the Somme and fell victim to Trench Fever.

I was thrown a bit by a lovely photograph of an icy exterior, like sloping snow-covered alps with a rock tunnel peeping out, as there was a big ladybird in the middle of the snow…..which I then realised was a ladybird sitting happily on the picture.  I don’t know if the pictures were rose-flavoured, but ladybirds clung to several of them, and as I moved around the exhibit, I found myself under siege, with ladybirds on my handbag, my arms, my suit….  They’re probably one of the few insects where a person in that position doesn’t leap up and screech in horror, swatting at them while shouting ‘get them off!’  We’re brought up to think of them as gentle creatures, even more nature joining in with the nature that appeared in these pictures of former military sites. (Isn’t that a gruesome rhyme we learn as children, though: when you think about it, for a children’s book? ‘Ladybird ladybird, fly away home. Your house is on fire, your children shall burn!'  I hear it’s been toned down for the more sensitive modern youth.)

In my short sojourn, I had learned a great deal.  Above all this interesting information was, of course, striking photographs.  Some were of magnificent vistas, ignoring what had gone before, and others were more ominous, with shell casings still to be found, abandoned tunnels, bomb craters, barbed wire protruding from the snow like a horrid old animal trap vying to clamp onto its poor prey.  These former battlegrounds all offered a view more interesting, in any case, than the unofficial tour of American Civil War (or War Between The States, as we were taught to call it in the South, since the southern states had succeeded from the Union) battlefields that my ex-husband insisted we take as newlyweds driving between North Carolina and Atlanta.  All of them were just grassy parkland or fields, indistinguishable from the piece of grassy parkland or fields nearby that had seen no action.  But then I don’t wish to see blood stains.

Scattered around these dramatic images in St James’s Park were people lying on the grass, dreaming in the unusual warmth of the glorious sun this late in the year, by the fountain in the water with Buckingham Palace in the distance, and the Horse Guards parade behind us.  At the edge of the water were trees whose leaves were finally turning, and the sort of angry and disappointed-with-me geese that make me always kick myself for entering a park without thinking to bring any bread or birdseed.  I had come to the park expecting to see just that sort of thing, and was thrilled to swell my mind with a bit of culture and knowledge instead, whilst still enjoying the unusually late warmth, stunning sky and glorious greenery. 

The exhibition comes with a mobile Education Centre where you can buy books of the photographs and other linked items.  I didn’t have a chance to go in, but the people leaving looked appreciative.  On its side was a map of World War One Allies.

The gallery leaves St James’s Park in London after Armistice Day, 11^th November 2014, and has already been to Paris, but will continue to tour until November 2018.  It is sponsored by the Royal British Legion.  If you miss the exhibition, visit the website to see some of Michael St Maur Sheil's entrancing photographs (and you can see how you can bring the exhibition to somewhere near you).   It’s worth a look.  http://www.fieldsofbattle1418.org/ .  

(Apologies that technical issues meant this was first published without the photographs and rather late on the last day of the exhibition in London.)

London Wetlands Centre's Winter Wonderland

On London Tonight on Friday, photographer Iain Green was shown demonstrating how best to take photographs on an icy day at the amazing London Wetlands Centre in Barnes. A fortnight ago, I was there photographing some of the same subjects on just such a day, but whereas he’s a talented photographer whose work turned out beautifully, I barely know how to switch on the camera. I have little concept of how to translate what I’m seeing in my mind into something impressive on display (I can’t say on paper; most of my photos end up as a slide show on my screen saver, which cheers me up as I love to see animals). I take snapshots, not photographs, to remind me of walking around somewhere wonderful on a pleasant , and that’s enough for now.

One day I will do as I’ve long intended and blog generally about visiting the sublime London Wetlands Centre (LWC), particularly as I still retain ‘outsider’ status despite being a member for over a year, since I get there rarely and know nothing about birds. I always say I’m not a birdwatcher; I’m a wildlife noticer. But I love going there for the amazing peace it offers, and given that just seeing mallard ducks on a park pond or starlings whistling in my tree thrills me, just because I adore seeing wildlife, it’s fantastic to find a spot where one is guaranteed to see plenty of it. Plus I figure if I keep taking pictures, one day I’ll figure it out, the theory being that practice makes acceptable. I will never be a committed wildlife photographer who lies in a frozen field for 20 hours in hopes of getting that perfect photograph of some rarely spotted creature. I like my creature comforts and can barely bend to bird-level to photograph the ones walking around thanks to my bad back. (I can bend down there; I’d just to remain down there until some kind passer-by passed by and offered to pick me up.) I don’t mind taking pictures with my unimpressive minor zoom lens of distant common ducks when I’m sitting in the comfort of one of their hides, and I tend to get shy and self-conscious around anyone who knows what they’re doing. But I just love being at the Centre and hearing the sublimely peaceful whisper of the breeze in the wheat-like fields with an orchestra of beautiful birdsong playing in the foreground. (One comes to zone out the sound of the planes flying overhead and the whistles from the nearby rugby ground, the latter of which rather adds to the atmosphere anyway).

But before I get to a sort of beginner’s blog to visiting the LWC and the true joys every step of the way, I thought I’d just put up a few of my snapshots from that icy January day, if only to show you the difference between what little I can manage when simply preserving a memory of the moment compared to similar subjects taken by professionals like Iain Green or the many mind-blowingly talented amateurs who regularly visit the Centre. I’m not just doing my part to make them look good, as they don’t need it. But maybe if I post a few of my mediocre snaps of a splendid day, it will show anyone reading that they can see some cute and pretty things on their visit and come away happy even if they’re ignorant and untalented as I am. It’s a great place to be. These aren’t my best photographs from the LWC ever (and there are many worse!) but they might give a slight impression of the loveliness of even an icy day at the London Wetlands Centre.

The ice, of course, brings the chance of seeing many apparently holy birds walking on water, like these coots. I think they must be the Torvill and Dean of the coot world, as they were very much at home on the ice together. Unlike Torvill and Dean, the ice seems to make them downright frisky.

This next photograph is a bit of abstract art, or a cold coot bathing in golden waters. It does not quite have the synchronised swimming look of water ballet that so many ducks give their audience, but I found it entrancing just the same.


Another enchanting episode repeated at the Centre is the sight of swans flying. The sound of swans flying is unreal; their flapping wings sound like the whirring of machinery in an industrial revolution factory, or the hum of a sleek classic car when it was a high-tech novelty. More than that, it puts one firmly in mind of aviation, which rather makes sense. Seeing such huge but graceful birds plough roughly into the water is another joy. They look as though they’re struggling to balance, trying out their new angels’ wings for a maiden flight, practically calling out ‘Whoa! Who-a!’ as their feet hit the water.

Their take-offs can seem just as unwieldy—but then even when we fly, take-offs and landings are the trickiest part of the flight. In this picture, I feel I should call ‘beware of low-flying objects!’ to what I think is a herring gull. It was like watching one of those films where the hapless protagonist is about to be run over by a lorry, and you have to hope that if he keeps his head down, it might just pass safely over him. (I’m guessing this big, brownish gull who was lone amongst the smaller black-headed gulls is a herring gull wearing his winter coat. His face is much more noble than I expected; he looks quite wizened. I wondered if he were a bit lonely, one of his kind amongst strangers who might have been thinking “You’re not from around these parts, are you?” and shutting him out. (No, I’m not really mad with Dr Doolittle Disease).

From huge to little….I saw a Little Grebe (and an astonishing number of other birds) on my first trip to the LWC and had never even heard of one before. Really, I first saw a little Little Grebe, as its mother was at the time underwater, diving for food for its….uh, grebeling? Dabchick chick? They wore flashier colours then, and I find them charming, so sweetly delicate, and they dive for so long whenever I raise my camera that I assume they’re trying to shake me off like celebrities try to ditch the paparazzi. Seriously, I think they are. If celebrities bothered to invest in scuba gear, far fewer photos of them looking fat in a bikini would show up in The Daily Mail.

Tufted Ducks are another charming group that always look like they’re shooting me an annoyed look. They remind me of Looney Tunes’ Daffy Duck, in which case perhaps the Tufted Ducks are just a bit self-conscious about their lisp and staring me down before I pick on them, which I would never do. But such a tough glare could easily give one Anatidaephobia. Though I still think it’s cute.

This blurry chap on the left is, I believe, a Water Rail. I caught him (insofar as I did) by pointing my not-outstandingly-long-zoom lens towards a very distant slightly bulbous blob amidst the far away reeds that I thought there was the tiniest chance could be the Jack Snipe that I had been looking at from a different hide (thanks to kind souls welcoming me when I arrived and letting me look through their scope to watch it bob). My cheapo binoculars don’t bring things much closer, so I snapped away on the off chance and was surprised to see the Water Rail when I got home. Which is grand because I didn't know I'd seen one. I know little about birds so I could be wrong, but it’s blurrily purdy, innit?

Similarly blurry but with little excuse is this group pruning session of a Wigeon with Eiders either side—not a great photo (on the right), but the symmetry somehow soothes me.

Starkly in better focus is this duck that, frankly, I know nothing about, but isn’t it xtraordinary? What lovely feathers, despite it being an odd combination of colours and patterns, like a deliberately clashing outfit from the 80s. Mostly it makes me think of handing a duck colouring book to a little girl who then, rather than boringly filling in the lines with typical mallard colours or just brown as many children might, instead applies all her favourite colour crayons and patterns and produces this gloriously different duck. As though this duck standing on that bit of 

wood has been coloured in beautifully by Mother Nature’s little girl.

Another beautiful exotic duck that I believe permanently lives at the Centre is this one illustrating the expression “like water off a duck’s back.” This next mystery resident duck on the left always seems to have a silly but intensively innocent look on its face, which I know is a weird thing to say about something that cannot smile. But maybe acting teachers should show this to their students when they’re trying to achieve an innocent look.

Speaking of exotic ducks, this is a bad picture of a Mandarin duck, which must officially be one of the most incredibly beautiful specimens of water fowl. I mean, just look at it; it looks as though it were designed by Ferrari….or Gucci. The picture’s poor because I didn’t catch his reflection, but at the time I was more interested in capturing the funky way his neck feathers looked as he repeatedly plunged his beak into the water (left), but failed to get a good one at the right angle. Still, just admire that beauty. Gorgeous, isn’t he? Amazing what nature creates.

Still with ducks, I must say that as an American, I never understood the fashion for hanging three ornamental flying ducks on your wall, as one of the old Coronation Street characters did, but seeing the real thing against a blue sky can almost explain its charm.  

Moving to geese, I feel oddly like there’s something sassy about how Egyptian Geese walk away, like a petulant girl storming off. Note that I said sassy, not sexy. I have no duck fetish. I worry that, if I add that I love their colouring, particularly their beautiful tail feathers, this whole paragraph looks a bit disturbing. I promise you I have no sick Owen-from-Vicar-of-Dibley-style love of ducks; I just think they’re lovely as I think trees are lovely.

Less pretty and even hard to make out is this ominous Poe crow, looking as though it morphed magically into a demon on a stark branch above. Okay, so it’s just a bad picture, but it looks better when I see it as part of my bleak Edgar Allen Poe world on a desolate winter’s day.

I had been hoping that such a day, might bring one of the bitterns out into view, as it might need to step out onto the ice to reach some food, but they were content to stay tucked away in the reeds. On my previous visit, however, I managed finally to see a bittern—two, actually—thanks entirely to others. I always pictured birdwatchers as being secretive and not wanting to share if they’d caught sight of something special, other than bragging about it later perhaps. The reality I’ve found at the Centre is that people are kind and welcoming and will gladly offer to show you something wonderful in their scope.

On that day, I’d been walking towards the Wildside area of the Centre, I believe in hopes of seeing a Water Vole at last, when a lovely volunteer stopped me on the path and asked if I’d seen the Bittern from the Observatory. Had she not done so, I would never have gone there. Indeed, it took me several visits before I was even aware of it, and it made me feel a bit like an airport departure lounge, with its giant glass wall overlooking the main lake, but feeling far from the best action. And when I did pop in on my way back and still saw nothing, a kind woman upstairs suggested that I look through her scope, which was fixed on the elusive bittern.

Although it was so far away I could barely make out with the naked eye its shape against the reeds, I aimed my camera at it rather pointlessly but took a few shots just in case, and of course can barely make out the blurry result [see right], but I’m happy to have the memento.

The friendly sharing continued when another chap who’d joined us called to a couple downstairs to invite them to come watch the bittern, which led to a member of staff directing the gentleman, who was in a wheelchair, to a hidden lift (most of the Centre is wonderfully accessible) as we shunted things about to help him view the bird. He and his wife then showed me on their camera photographs they’d just taken a Water Vole near the Dulverton Hide, and although the sun was setting, I decided to rush there to try my best to finally see Ratty.

I had no luck, of course, and decided on my way back to the Visitor’s Centre and exit to pop into the Dulverton Hide even though it was surely too dark to see anything, thinking I’d just glance out the window at the emptiness and leave. However, two silhouetted gentlemen were in their helping each other find something they were straining to see—a second Bittern. They decided to include me but said things like, “Do you see that sand bank with the Egyptian Geese on it?” which made me panic and think, “Oh no—they assume I know what we’re talking about!” But then I realised I do know what Egyptian Geese look like now, thanks to my visits to the Centre. (Yes, they’re the sassy ones).

I watched it until it got quite dark, and then walked back with the remaining kind bittern-spotting soul, the only disadvantage being that we chatted as we passed through the gift shop, where I’d intended to use my coupon for a free book that I’d been given when I renewed my membership, so I thought I’d leave it ‘til next time, unaware there was an expiry date, 16 days before my next visit. So humph. But it was worth it. Not just for watching a bittern until late, but because the warm, chummy, can-we-help-you nature of the volunteers and fellow visitors shines over that disappointment. I was a bit intimidated when I first went to the Centre, seeing people who clearly know what they’re doing wandering around with telescopes on tripods and cameras that cost more than a car. But I’ve found that most knowledgeable people there really welcome the chance to share and don’t mind at all if you’re a novice.

Finally, this golden blur shows no cute birds nor any of the ice on my recent visit, but it always makes me think of cereal adverts for some reason, and its inclusion here is solely because I’m a bit peckish. Mind you, it also reminds me of the variety of mini-terrains in the wetlands centre, this reedbed area being one of the most peaceful, I find, because of the breeze in the wheat (or wheat-like grasses). Even on busier days, I seem to pass few people here, and I adore its tranquillity. Its charm never disappears, regardless of the season. There is always something fantastic to see at the London Wetlands Centre, be it migrant birds, resident birds (eg innocent ducks or sassy geese), insects like damselflies, as well as frogs, water voles (if you’re lucky) and glorious flora. It’s a marvellous place, even on a freezing day as this one was. I already feel eager for my next visit. There’s still a water vole to be seen…somewhere! 

 

Incidentally, the London Wetlands Centre occasionally holds wildlife photography workshops by photographers such as the above mentioned Iain Glenn and the outstanding Mark Carwardine, so keep an eye on their events page, sign up for alerts or follow them on Twitter.