A Somerset Lad

The rain relented and the grass had dried sufficiently to allow for an attempt to cut it.

For years, the garden would have been attacked with a rotary mower that had a 325 cc Briggs and Stratton engine. It was indestructible, there was nothing it would not cut. My father would point out that it had an engine larger than many motor cycles. The exhaust pipe would get burning hot and there would have been steady puffs of blue smoke.

The dangers of lawn mowers were always emphasized, but no-one thought there was a serious threat from something so domestic.

It was the experience of clerical colleagues that made me realize that cutting the grass could have life-changing implications.

There was one whose cylinder mower became clogged with damp grass. The blades would not turn and he neglected to disengage the gear before attempting to free the mechanism. The blades were loosened and their turn took with them the tops of two of his fingers.

Worse than that experience was that of one of those who had been through college with me. Cutting the lawn of his house in rural Ireland one afternoon, he put his rotary mower over his foot, severing his big toe.

Anaesthetised by shock, he picked up the toe, got into his car, and drove to the post office. The postmistress drove him to the hospital where he hoped they would be able to reattach the lost toe. The damage was such that there was nothing that could be done other than to bandage the wound. It took him weeks to learn to walk again.

Approaching the lawn mower with appropriate respect today, I realised that it was years since I had last used a petrol lawn mower.  I took care to check the petrol tank was well-filled, and that the spark plug clean, and I was cautious not to flood the engine. Repeated pulls of the starting cord were of no avail. The engine would not fire.

My sister, the usual gardener, suggested I brought the mower too the back door.

With her leg in plaster, it seemed unlikely that the mower would be more responsive to her efforts, but I brought the mower so she could reach it from her wheelchair.

Holding a yellow bar against the handle, a short tug from her started the engine. The yellow bar acted as a dead man’s handle, without it being held, the mower would not start.

What past injuries might have been avoided by such a device?

In thirty years of parish minisry there were people about whom I came to be increasingly cynical and others who remained a constant cause for admiration, among the latter were gravediggers.

A fascination with gravediggers probably began with reading William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The sharpwitted characters appealed to an egalitarian spirit and English stoicism. The flesh and blood gravediggers I encountered had the wit and philosophical approach of their fictional Elizabethan forebears. The one thing I never appreciated about gravediggers is the sheer amount of physical effort it takes to dig a grave.

Max, my sister’s beautiful German Shepherd dog died on Monday night. He had been at home with my nephew playing with his favourite yellow tennis ball and lay down and died with the ball between his paws.

My sister and her husband returned from their holiday in Cornwall and at midday yesterday her husband and I set about digging a grave under the trees at the top of the garden at my mother’s house. It has been the final resting place of a succession of family dogs and there could be no question of Max being laid to rest anywhere else.

The pile of tools would have equipped a professional grave digger: spades, a long-handled shovel, a pick axe, a 14 lb sledge hammer and post hole digging bars for breaking the ground.

The ground was hard, the soil criss-crossed by tree roots, the sub-soil was composed of stone and heavy clay. Digging a grave was not the sort of experience I had imagined.

Eventually, we agreed that an acceptable depth had been reached. Max was laid gently into the ground, with his blanket, his bone, and his yellow tennis ball.

Stepping back from the grave, I spoke to the dog. ‘Max, there are people who say that dogs don’t have souls, that they don’t go to heaven. They are people who don’t understand the Bible. Saint Paul said the whole creation is awaiting redemption and that obviously includes dogs.  So, Max, in sure and certain hope of the resurrection we commit your body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust’.

Throwing the final handful of soil into the grave, I stepped back and picked up my spade.

With gentle reverence, we filled in the grave, and then covered it with the turves of grass we had cut at the beginning.

Undoubtedly, my burial was a heretical action, but I have long since stopped worrying about those who would purport to talk about heresy. Shakespeare’s gravediggers might have agreed with me,

After decades of speculative stories, I finally found documentary evidence. The International Committee of the Red Cross have prisoner of war records from the First World War online, half a million files of information.

At last, I had found Uncle Jack, but the records did not match the oral tradition that had come down through the family.

The story goes that the Great War was at its height when Uncle Jack joined the army and was sent to the Western Front.  The official age for enlistment was eighteen, but there were many younger than Jack in the trenches.   Jack was captured by the Germans, but was said to have appeared on no prisoner of war lists so was assumed to be dead.

The war ended in November 1918 and the family tradition said there was neither sign nor record of him.

Jack returned home in 1919.  It was said that he had we walked back through the chaos of post-war Europe from the coalmines in Poland where he and many others had been working as forced labour.   Leaving the mines, he had no identity papers and tied rags around his bare feet. It was said that he had walked a hundred miles before finding someone who could assist him in his journey homewards.

There was a family story that he was carried through the streets of Langport, shoulder high, when he came home.  It had seemed unlikely, but who knows?  Maybe it was one of the few happy stories from those bleak times.  The Great War had been followed by the Spanish Flu, which had claimed more victims than the fighting, taking its heaviest toll amongst the younger and fitter whose ranks had already been reduced by the conflict.

Then on Saturday, I discovered Jack’s prisoner of war records. He had been captured on 27th May 1918. The 1/5th  battalion of the Durham Light Infantry to which Jack belonged had suffered heavy casualties. The German onslaught of the spring of 1918 had reduced the battalion number to 103 officers and men, Jack would have been among the hundreds who didn’t answer the roll call.

Jack is recorded as being in a camp in Hesse in September 1918. On 18th November 1918, he is shown as being among men in a transit camp in Holland, awaiting repatriation to England.

After that reference, the trail goes cold. A year later, the Langport and Somerton Herald reported that Private Jack Martin of Huish Episcopi woulds be demobilised on 8th November.

The family tradition said he had disappeared for a year, Presumably, the absence was not during the Great War, but in the year that followed.

Soldiers who had been prisoners of war were generally granted two months leave and given the option of considering themselves to be demobilised if they did not wish to return to duty. Jack must have chosen to continue military service, the mystery now is why no-one knew where he was and why in the years that followed he never told anyone.