As it was a quiet sunday I passed the time by watching a little TV. I sat through a documentary about the Somme. As always happens any time I watch anything to do with WW1 I immediately think of my grandad. He was the single biggest influence on my life and the way I think today. He was also my living hero and someone I still feel privileged to have known.
He managed to survive the living hell of the Flanders battlefields for almost three years before being wounded by a mortar shell. After all his experiences and the horrors he encountered, he came through it all not only sane, but one of the gentlest and loving men I have ever met.
It was whilst watching the flickering, black and white film clips taken at the time I realised something so very obvious but something I had never really thought about before. These happy, virile young men gallantly waving their hats in the air for the cameras were all now dead and part of history. The very nature of cinematic photography had created something not only poignant but it had also created a type of ghost. The dead are replaying a vivid and powerful time in their lives over and over again. Oh I know they aren't really ghosts in the strict sense of the word and that film is merely a recording medium, but the feelings it can evoke at certain times can almost be as powerful as the real thing.
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