Reflections

Perhaps across the years like me you have returned through print or on foot to the battlefields of Belgium or France, either to wonder across the events or ponder the cataclysm that eviscerated an entire generation and shaped Europe’s destiny for many decades. Who, even with an open mind could comprehend how we were driven to conflict; was it just the way of things then?

So why dig again through this oft' ploughed ground, the accountable long departed, the guns silent, and the graves cold for nearly a century? Perhaps because the stories cannot be contained, they burst up through fields manured by blood, bone and scattered steel demanding to be aired where there is remembering left to be done. Then there is the fascination that sticks like Flanders mud to times where the best and worst of us is laid bare within tales that resonate with our lives, often still informing what we do, and why we do it.

Years ago during a free of duty ‘stand-over’ day in Brussels I hopped onto a train to Ypres with my co-pilot to visit The Menin Gate wander again around endless lines of trim white gravestones in the military cemeteries beyond. My colleague had a mission, he wanted to find his great grandfather’s name. Allegedly it was chiseled within the the lists of 54,339 others who fell on the Ypres Salient to no known place of rest. He wanted to photograph the inscription then report back to the family. "Nothing fancy you understand" he chirped, "... just something for granddad and a day out of the crew hotel’.
On arrival we walked from the station chatting amiably about nothing in particular, the town appeared untouched by the Great War. We both knew the truth of it, we were surrounded by a reconstruction modelled closely to a pre-war plans and photograph archive pulled together after the conflict. The ville had been progressively reduced to its foundations by artillery as the two sides fought for possession.

Arriving at The Menin Gate under light rain from a leaden sky we took shelter beneath the impressive structure that from the myriad of inscriptions covering every stone face, each a page from a colossal, dispersed sandstone book of eternal remembrance. Beneath the enfolding arches I gazed in wonder at this stilling memorial and passed a muted comment to my colleague which echoed around the walls unanswered. I turned to find him tracing out the contours of an inscription with his index finger, "it was the first name I looked at, I can’t believe it". He brushed a tear aside without embarrassment, "what are the odds on that eh?".
Why would a twenty-six year old man so detached from the time and events react in this way to the only known evidence of the existence of an 'unknown' relative? If you know the answer please tell me: it’s not the first time this inexplicable kind of reaction has happened in front of me.

Arthur Keen was an ordinary young man who, like his friends was made extraordinary. A son of Edwardian England grown in the industrial English Midlands into a large, wealthy family. Prepared for University and perhaps a life in the family engineering business, the call of duty or the sound of the guns took him first to the army, and then to the new elite branch of the service, the Royal Flying Corps. ‘A short but glamorous life’ as one observer wryly put it.

It has been a little over a century since our first faltering hops into the air on swings of spruce, fabric and wire. Now here we are with coloured images of the surface of Mars - a probe on the surface of Titan, Saturn’s moon sending back the same and more besides. Technology's march as evidenced by through a Retina ™ screen on a device practically anywhere, including, in flight — and all within one hundred short years.
Be it romance or the curiosity surrounding those heady, formative years of flight, the Great War will simply not go away, indefinable strands running through bloodlines and intellects persistently connects us to it. Like Arthur’s time capsule with its dusty, pencil written pages, photographs and personal effects sing out to have their deeper story unearthed.

When the black painted tin box of personal effects was placed into the hands of his great nephew Piers, it had a labeled canvas cover across the lid - ‘Major A.W. Keen, RAF’. It was unopened and presumably had been so since sealing after persons unknown had cleared selected personal contents from his desk and draws at Bruay in 1918. What was to emerge from the box was a wonderful personal archive that contained so much both obvious and visible, but also concealed within. What struck Piers and his brothers, Andrew and Rupert, and latterly myself was the sense of immediacy transmitted by the artefacts, the letters and photos lying there which after transcription and arrangement into a chronological might reveal so much..

The ‘Aviator in the Attic’ clearly has a story to tell, but in a sense this young aviator has almost started to live again, the colour returning to his life as time and events begin to unfold again before us. Writers will tell you about their characters formed in works of fiction, of how you may construct a plot thus, only to be ‘told’ by your character, ‘sorry, you can’t say that’ or, ‘I wouldn’t do it that way’. In short they become so familiar that they begin to speak, gain a voice and inform the writing. During the process of research and back-filling Arthur’s life I’m hoping that he will do this for our small team of researchers as we reveal more about his life and times. Deciding how much of this to listen to is an art to be developed as great care must be taken not to put words into his mouth, nor cloud the purity of the story.