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The
Memorial
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"THE
MEANING OF THE TOWN MEMORIAL" PART THREE
by Marilyn Stephenson-Knight
On Wednesday, 5th
November 1924, the afternoon was fine. Outside Maison Dieu House
an immense crowd had gathered, to witness the unveiling of the
Town Memorial. Sixteen councillors, contingents from the
services, eight clergymen (including the Archbishop of
Canterbury), and a hundred-strong choir pressed about the
Memorial. Relatives of casualties stood above them on a
platform, and higher still, adventurously placed on the roof of
the Police Station, were the ex-Servicemen and POWs. Townsfolk
hung like garlands from the roofs and windows of every building.
Even so many could not witness the ceremony for the throng on
the ground stretched back to Ladywell.
The unveiling was the
moment when the Material Memorial (the bronze, stone, and
surrounding garden) and the Intangible Memorial (how the
Memorial is interpreted and given meaning) were publicly joined.
There to do it was the then Vice Admiral Sir Roger Keyes, former
Commander of the Dover Patrol. Dovorians had lived "on the very
threshold of the war", he said, reminding them that they too had
heard the guns in Flanders booming, and he called upon the
spirit that had won the war to win now the peace by rebuilding a
country racked by unemployment, lack of housing, and unrest. He
pulled the cords to unveil the Memorial, and, as though to
illustrate Sir Roger's words, a bluejacket at once climbed up
the Memorial to release a drape that had caught on the bronze
figure.
After the ceremony people
filed past the Memorial for hours, laying wreaths and flowers.
It was a public expression of many private griefs, made visible
by the words on their tributes: "To our beloved son and
grandson, Sydney and William", "to our darling George, Mother
and all", "our dear Daddy, from Ted and George", "to my dear
husband, from his loving wife,
 Clara",
"for my dear old pal,
Arthur". The hard stone of the Memorial was cushioned and
bright with many colours, the names frozen in bronze warmed by
memories from home. From that moment the Memorial became a
Place, a space imbued with significance, and that significance
has grown until the present day.
Six days after the
unveiling was the sixth commemoration of Armistice Day. 3,000
people attended a simple service at the Memorial. The "Last
Post", followed by a gun firing from the Castle, began the
two-minute silence. More people laid wreaths on top of those
already there. Harry Barton was 20 when he died from a single
shot in France; his body was never found. His family were among
those who returned to the Memorial that day, laying more
flowers. The wreaths were symbols of relationships wrecked by
the war, washed up on the shores of Cornish granite.
As a Place, the Memorial
changed the flow of people (they had to walk round it) and their
thoughts (as a focus for Remembrance and marker of renewal). The
Memorial could be seen as a Surtsey, a new island parting and
breaking a sea of human time, thrown up by the volcanic
eruptions of war. Just as an island can only be so if it has
water around it, so too does the Memorial draw meaning from its
surrounding time. The breadth and depth of that sea of time are
key elements in the meaning of the Memorial.
For breadth close to shore,
as it were, would be the Armistice Day events in Dover. It was
normally a weekday, and just before 11am people would gather by
the Memorial for hymn-singing, an address, and the two-minute
silence presaged by the Last Post. Thousands attended to share
this moment; on a number of occasions the crowd was so dense
that it stretched back to Effingham Crescent. Although they
joined in enthusiastically with the singing, led each year by
bands from the different troops stationed at Dover, many were
unable to see or hear the parts of the ceremony conducted by
officials. Access and the shared experience were important,
without the ceremony irritatingly lost meaning. Amplifiers
corrected the sound problem; the other has proved rather more
thorny.
Some years were worse than
others. In 1949 the memorial was rededicated with an inscription
including fallen in World War II. Craning to see past banks of
uniforms, the Dover Express said, the public had been relegated
to sightseers. As citizens of THE front-line town, it added
acerbically, Dovorians more than anyone "know that medals are
not the sole evidence of heroism or fortitude". The next year an
enclosure was roped-off for relatives of casualties, to ensure
their good view. They voted with their entry tickets, and a
slightly sniffy report noted that the enclosure had been full of
children. Furthermore, the paper opined, "in a garrison town
such as Dover, the absence of military representatives was
noticeable". (This perhaps proves the adage that you cannot
please all of the people all of the time!)
 There were compensations.
Wreaths, and later the crosses of the Field of Remembrance, were
integral to Remembrance. Each person could claim an individual
moment by the Memorial. Bending or crouching to lay a wreath
automatically makes an obeisance to the loved one, and they were
remembered personally year after year by inscriptions. "Dick and
George, from Dad, Brothers, and Sisters" (1925), "George and
Dick, from Dad, Brothers and Sisters" (1926), "George and Dick,
from Dad, Brothers and Sisters, also from nieces Peg and Pat"
(1927). Grief did not fade. In 1928, one of the saddest wreaths
was laid for another casualty. "To dear Joe, from poor old dad."
It holds all the tragedy of war.
Many people experienced the
individual moment of wreath-laying. Dover itself also shared a
wider experience of Remembrance. The gun at the Castle alerted
those unable to attend the Memorial to pause. Schools lined up
in their playgrounds, troops at the garrisons paraded in
silence. Employees and officials of the railway, often
accompanied by passengers, stood silently by the memorial at the
Marine Station. So still was the town that in 1926 the maroon
from Folkestone, announcing their two-minute silence was clearly
heard.
It was a reminder that at
thousands of other memorials across the country and beyond, the
same stillness was falling. Part of the meaning of the Memorial
depends on the knowledge of the breadth of Remembrance, that it
is widespread. Indeed, indeed, in 1924, using an influential
precedent, the Council stated that Armistice ceremonies would be
"very much on the same lines as those in London" attended by the
King. The chimes of Big Ben, transmitted to Dovorians at the
Memorial, occasionally accompanied with relayed descriptions of
the ceremony at the Cenotaph too, helped this imagination of a
national community. In 1939, when national cohesion and courage
were again tested by war, practical considerations of safety
cancelled the ceremony at the Memorial, though the Mayor did lay
a wreath, and instead Dovorians listened at home to the
broadcast from Westminster Abbey.
In Dover, before the second
war, there was almost a Season of Remembrance. On Armistice Day
the Memorial could be floodlit, and a number of churches held
special evening services, sometimes then also laying wreaths, as
did parading Guides and Scouts. As Armistice normally fell on a
weekday, many churches held Remembrance services the Sunday
before, and at Buckland a medalled parade and evensong was
inaugurated for ex-Service men. St Martin's held two services
for Old Boys, the afternoon one concluding at the school
memorial where a wreath would be laid. The Duke of York's held
weekend reunions, with a football match and an evening dance for
old and current boys on the Saturday. The next morning they laid
wreaths at the school memorial, after a solemn chapel service.
Very popular were events at
Dover Town Hall. The Friendly Societies on Sunday afternoon and
the Salvation Army in the evening both held well-attended
services, while the British Legion organised a Festival of
Remembrance. It began with religious dedications, but the second
half was a themed concert, with tableaux, soloists, and
community singing of favourites like "Pack up your Troubles" and
"It's a Long Way to Tipperary" that reportedly "almost shook the
Hall".
 The Memorial also draws on
depth of experience, or the passing of time, for its meaning.
Immediate roots lie firmly in the Great War. The Rev J Osborne
Martin, in an address to the Wesleyan churches on Armistice Day
1924, recalled a communion service in a "shell-riddled orchard"
in France on the eve of the Battle of the Somme, 1916. The men
had brought to him pocket books, photographs, and letters -
memories of those at home. Most of the communicants died the
next day. They had left their wills with Reverend Martin too.
Just as the soldiers had
remembered loved ones at home, so were they now remembered. In a
symbolic reunion, ashes from poppies and crosses placed at the
Memorial would later be scattered over graves and battlefields
in France and Belgium. Depth - time passing - brings the ability
to look both forwards and backwards, and Remembrance ceremonies
derive meaning from their age and a sense of unbroken continuity
with the past. Thus is born a tradition. Even during the second
World War, when only a plinth remained, the bronze figure being
stored for safety, the Mayor continued to lay a wreath by the
Memorial, and in the smaller villages nearby ceremonies and
parades were still held. Occasionally, continuity is symbolised
by a person, as when the last surviving Old Contemptible in
Dover, Mr Archibald Stanley, laid a wreath on the 70th
anniversary of the Armistice. A sad symbol of continuity was
when Boer and Great War veterans stood with young serving
soldiers at the 25th anniversary, in 1943.
World War II casualties are
recorded in a Book of Remembrance, dedicated at St Mary's in
1951. Two years before the Memorial had been rededicated, with a
new inscription in memory of the casualties of both wars.
Nevertheless, the Memorial, with its annual ceremony and
permanent visible presence in the town, has a different
significance, revealed by a number of requests in the last
twenty years for further names from both wars to be inscribed
there.
The continuing importance
of the Memorial is also revealed by the traditions that have
developed around it. Too great a deviation from what is expected
will arouse criticism and may even seem disrespectful. On
several occasions the absence of hymns and the national anthem,
or music, was deplored, while disturbance of the two-minute
silence has often been condemned. In 1930 and for several years
afterwards the plea was made for vehicles to stop and turn off
their engines. Traffic noise became an unacceptable part of the
tradition, seemingly irresolvable. Over four decades later a
resident remarked cynically that it might prove easier to stop
remembering the Fallen than to stop the traffic.
That is something that I
believe firmly must never happen. We must continue to remember.
The Memorial and thousands of others like it are now part of our
identity. Wherever we go, in Britain and beyond, they are
familiar items, reminders of our shared past and silent pointers
at paths for our future. When he dedicated the Memorial in 1924,
the Archbishop of Canterbury, spoke of those who had "laid down
their lives ungrudgingly" and said "they taught us to appreciate
the power and possibility of quite ordinary people". The
memorials are symbols of great loss and suffering. Embedded
within them is death, bereavement, pain, and sorrow. But they
tell other stories too, of courage, fortitude, and compassion,
of faith and comradeship and enduring love. They are beacons of
hope for the future. Above all, they are the stories of ordinary
people. As the Archbishop said in 1924, we should "thank God for
those whose monument stands here, for generations yet unborn".
That for me is the Meaning
of the Town Memorial.
*
Post Script
This concludes the short
series about the meaning of the Town Memorial - but it certainly
is no conclusion to the meaning. The Memorial has different
meanings for different people (breadth), and its meaning will
continue to build and grow (depth). I hope it will do so for
centuries after I am gone.
If you would like to find
out more - or have more to tell us - about these ordinary
people, those who did extraordinary things, who were loved and
lost, and the families that mourned them, visit the Dover War
Memorial Project website. It's updated daily with information
about our casualties and much more besides, and there is a forum
for discussion. Or
contact us. I would love to hear from you.
And finally - thank you to
you, the Dover Society, for your kind hospitality. I have
enjoyed very much writing this series and learnt much about our
beautiful Memorial. I look forward to meeting as many as
possible of you again, on my next visit to Dover.
illustrations:
Remembrance Day 1955
Armistice Day 1928
William Traynor, VC winner from Dover, laying a wreath at the
Memorial
with thanks to:
Mr Tony Belsey
Mr Simon Chambers
The Dover Express
This article first appeared in the Dover
Society Newsletter for March 2006
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