Not your obvious companion, then, for a night down the pub or at the music hall. One wonders how he could possibly have understood the needs of those whom he was to lead once the final game kicked off. In fact, Raymond seems to have had a complete contempt for everybody outside his immediate coterie of friends. He even seems to have extended this attitude to eminent solicitors and “heavy-witted” judges once he took up the law. But now comes the paradox.
Remember that Raymond came from the Asquiths, one of the great Liberal families, the Liberals whose credo was to help the working classes to better themselves. It would appear that at least some of the Party’s compassion had rubbed off on him as, when he began to make noises about a political career, Raymond found an admirer in none other than J H Thomas and other prominent members of the nascent Labour Party. It may well be that his apparent concern for the less fortunate members of society was both patronising and even paternalistic but at least it did exist. Who knows how radicalised he may have become had he been spared the untimely death he met as a subaltern on the Somme? As he revealed in a letter to J H Thomas he “sought no privileges not accorded to the ordinary soldier” and felt he belonged among “the close comradeship of his battalion”. And it was with his companions in this battalion of the Grenadier Guards that he died on the road from Ginchy to Lesbouefs on September 15, 1916.
Raymond was memorialised thus by Buchan, "Debonair and brilliant and brave, he is now part of that immortal England which knows not age or weariness or defeat."
Perhaps it’s best that I leave these last words by Buchan on Raymond to stand uncommented upon. After all Buchan knew him and his society whereas I do not. I’m also acutely conscious of the fact that any opinions I express are the product of later developments and discoveries, socially, politically and historically, and that I’m being influenced by my own knowledge and beliefs in coming to conclusions that are, perhaps, unfair.
The next time I stand before that plaque in Amiens I don’t know how I shall feel. Guilty perhaps that I have by my writing demeaned the memory of a great man and others of his class who died. On the other hand it may well be that I’m only being true to myself and the memory of the thousands of men and women from across the social spectrum who perished on the battlefields or at base hospitals, sheep betrayed by the very shepherds who should have done more to protect them from the wolves of war. Note that I wrote 'betrayed' not 'abandoned' as Raymond and his fellow glitterati ended up just as dead as those who became, regardless of class, their comrades in death as they never could have been in life.
Regardless of, or more probably because of, what I have just written, I shall pay a visit to Raymond’s grave in Guillemont Road Cemetery and make amends if any are necessary.
Having now broken the thread of my tour of the cathedral in no uncertain manner, this is probably as good a time as any to address the question of my cemetery visits. Why do I go out of my way to stand at a white headstone in a graveyard far from home?
You know, I don’t really have an answer. The best I can come up with is to let the man, or woman, who lies before me ‘know’ that I remember them and respect that they have done something that I could never have done. I touch the stone and talk softly, just saying “I’m here because you’re there. I’ve had all the dawns and sunsets you’ve missed. So thanks.” Pure superstition, of course, and probably completely meaningless. But it isn’t to me. I’m not in the least religious nor a believer in the hereafter but there, in the beautifully maintained cemeteries of Flanders and France, I experience spirituality and, especially, peace. In addition, all those dead who are forever young make me realise what an incredibly lucky little lad I’ve been, never having to have faced the prospect of a very early bath. Like Raymond.
I finish my cathedral tour by looking at the various other plaques erected after the War, all seven of them, each one honouring the sacrifices made by the countries of the British Empire and also the USA. Then it’s time to return to the sunlight and I set off down to the River Somme and a literary connection.
I suppose that for my generation, the one whose fathers participated in the War, the very word ‘Somme’ evokes a shudder of horror and that bleakest of statistics, ‘20,000 dead on the first day’. Ironically, the river herself is a serene old girl flowing in gentle fashion through the town as she has done over the centuries.
