The Ring of Remembrance

On 11th November 2014, President François Hollande of France inaugurated a new memorial to the fallen soldiers of the First World War in Ablain-Saint-Nazaire, in the Pas-de-Calais region. Situated next to the Notre-Dame-de-Lorette cemetery, the largest French military cemetery in the country, and known as the Ring of Remembrance (“L’Anneau de la Mémoire”), it is a ring approximately 350 metres in diameter composed of 500 stone slabs standing 3 metres high. On these slabs are inscribed the names of nearly 580 000 soldiers who died in battle in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region between 1914 and 1918, including Owen, Rosenberg, Kipling and Sorley. The names are indicated alphabetically, but what is remarkable is that there is no mention of rank, origin, religion or nationality for each name. Around 40 nationalities are consequently represented, including some 170 000 Germans. Thus, former enemies stand finally reunited in death as they could never have been in their lifetime.

It is the very starkness of this staggeringly long list of names forever etched in an endless circle which, to my mind, really drives home the human tragedy of this conflict. For me, the problem with numbers is that once we start counting into the thousands, we quickly lose track of their significance and fail to grasp what they truly represent. I recall reading a book by the astrophysicist, John Gribbin, around 20 years ago, in which the writer reminds us of how in dealing with the universe and its workings we are often faced with astronomical numbers which are almost impossible to envisage: the age of the universe itself, the distances between galaxies, the number of atoms in a given quantity, …. He gives Avogadro’s number as an example, which is the number of atoms in 12g (about a spoonful) of carbon. This number is 6 followed by 23 zeroes; an astronomically high number which our brains are incapable of imagining. In order to help us appreciate how many atoms are present, Gribbin imagines a supernatural being observing the evolution of the universe from the Big Bang to the present day. For every second that passes, this being extracts one single atom from the spoonful of carbon. Having witnessed 15 billion years of the universe’s history whilst carrying out this intricate operation second by second on the carbon, the being realises that it has only removed one millionth of all the atoms present. In other words, it would have to perform this operation second by second from the Big Bang until now 1 million times over before emptying the spoon. I was so struck by this paradigm, and how it allowed me to visualize a little better such extraordinary concepts, that I have never forgotten it.

Of course, the number 580 000 is far smaller than many of those cited in astrophysics, but nevertheless poses similar problems of complete understanding. I, for one, would be hard pressed to imagine 580 000 people standing in a crowd, for example. The Ring certainly helped me to appreciate and visualize this number. As I stood within it encircled by this alphabetical list, I was able at least to get some limited sense of proportion of the enormity of the number of human beings cut down on the battlefields of northern France. Behind each name that bore down on me, whether ally or foe, I was able to picture a husband, a father, a son, a brother, a friend who would not be returning home from the front. As visitors probably quite often do, I went to see how many I could find with my own surname. Finding the section with “Davis” and “Davies”, I stood in awe in front of 2 whole plaques filled nearly top to bottom just with these names.

This memorial really brings scale and a human touch to the often faceless notion of conflict, and is a fitting and moving edifice. As you walk around it, taking in all the names that appear, you may also notice how the stones are implanted on uneven ground in such a way that several of the slabs are actually suspended in midair—a chilling reminder of the instability and fragile nature of peace.