‘Five foot ten of a beautiful young Englishman under French soil. Never a joke, never a look, never a word more to add to my store of memories. The book is shut up forever and as the years pass I shall remember less and less, till he becomes a vague personality; a stereotyped photograph.’
Captain Norman Austin Taylor © Sarah Vernon
Poor Norman.
Such a commonplace death. Shot by a single sniper. Youngest child, only son. Three sisters and a father left to grieve along with so many other fathers, mothers, sisters, wives, brothers, children.
“Poor Norman,” said my grandmother Joyce in the 1950s, and turned away so that her youngest son changed the subject. Was she still, so many, many years later, too saddened by her brother’s death to talk or had he, for her, become nothing but a stereotyped photograph about whom she felt unable to talk?
A stereotyped photograph. I have two in my possession, both of Norman in Army uniform. The round, boyish face of inexperience looks at me in the one [above]: a bland, almost formal, expression gives way to a makeshift confidence on closer inspection and, with arms folded, suggests a reluctance to be photographed.
In the other [below], he leans against a pillar with engaging insouciance; a cigarette holder, the ash about to drop, rests between sturdy fingers. Three or four years, maybe less, separate the pictures. The poise in the latter cannot mask the face of a man who has experienced the muck and the noise, the unutterable panic and horror of trench warfare.
Captain Noman Austin Taylor © Sarah Vernon
‘He was hit at four o’clock on the morning of 24th March 1918,’ wrote Joyce the following year. ‘I felt that icy hand on my heart which I shall never now feel again.’ When I first read my grandmother’s words, I took her to mean that only her brother’s death could produce such an icy hand. I look at the words now and see only that she felt her heart would never feel anything again. Perhaps that is why she turned away from her son.
We will remember them.
Captain Norman Austin Taylor 1895-1918
@ALBerridge I thought you might enjoy this post about my great-uncle during #WWI http://t.co/p8CYYU8nRz
— First Night Design (@FirstNightArt) May 15, 2014
@FirstNightArt That’s beautifully written and very moving. No high drama, just the reality of human loss in a war. Great post – thank you.
— Louise Berridge (@ALBerridge) May 15, 2014
@ALBerridge I’m so glad you like it.
— First Night Design (@FirstNightArt) May 15, 2014
Take care and keep laughing!
Originally posted on First Night Design.
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First Night History 
such a powerful post; how that awful news must have hit home so hard; I just can’t begin to imagine how you would feel.
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Your words mean a lot to me, Geoff. Thank you so much. It all but destroyed my grandmother only for her husband, my grandfather, to be killed in 1940 – another man, referring to yours and my comments on your post yesterday, that I never knew but whom the thought of makes me weep.
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I know so young, so full of hope and yet taken. Random acts of cruelty, forever there to catch us.
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Pingback: Great Uncle Norman: ‘shot by a single sniper’ | First Night History | First Night History
Beautiful Sarah, a loss and bewilderment so keenly felt by so many who could never speak of their experiences like my own grandfathers. I never knew my mother’s father – long gone from gas related lung problems before I arrived and my lovely grandpa that I did know was a very shadowy figure. I suppose as a gentleman in those days one just did not discuss these things and upset the family at home. So much has changed and yet so little.
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Thank you, Jane. I’m so glad you found it beautiful. The thought of them keeping their counsel, whether through trauma, a stiff upper lip, or both, breaks ones heart.
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Very much so Sarah, the times we live in have changed so much have they not?
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I remember this one from before, Sarah. It is no less tragic for a second reading, and a personal and individual portrayal of the grief left at home too.
Best wishes, Pete.
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Thank you, Pete. Norman haunts my dreams.
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A beautiful post, Sarah. Too easy to forget these were a mother’s son, a father, a brother… not just a statistic or a nameless soldier.
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Much thanks, Sue. My grandmother was never the same again and to compound it all, lost my grandfather at Calais in 1940. That screwed up my mother who had just turned 18. I’m trying to stop the rot!
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That’s the overlooked tragedy… these things spread their ripples wider than the casualty lists.
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It certainly is. Even as a child I could see the effect of something appalling that had passed down the generations, though I knew not what until my teens. All of us today bear the scars of the tragedies of our forebears.
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We do. The two World Wars shaped our parents and theirs… and probably still shape our own children, even though we don’t see it as clearly.
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Sadly, yes. I think it’s why I’m a little obsessed with both wars. How did they survive, how did they bear such sorrow? If they can do it, albeit with scars, then so can I bear the tragedies of my own life.
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Something carried them through, and that has to leave its mark too on subsequent generations.
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It’s part of the reason I am so inspired by you and Nick. Mind you, no one in their right mind would not be inspired!
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Nick is enough to inspire anyone, I think .
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