Immaculate
in spotless cricket whites,
Keeping
wicket on the village green,
Up
past Slad’s crossroad war memorial,
Betwixt
Purgatory and Paradise,
To
where 7323 Private Edward Hogg’s name
(7th
Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment),
Returned,
after dying with 300 comrades,
In
their own version of hell in Belgium.
One
hundred years later, great-great nephew,
Jack
Russell: of England, Gloucestershire, Stroud,
Archway
School, Forest Green, and pilgrim,
Recreated
the morning steps to death
In
the fields around Zwartelen in Belgium:
‘I
found a photo of him about five years ago …
Last
year … we found the very field where he died …
Waiting
for the right time and then at 9 a.m.,
When
they were ordered into the woods,
I
walked down the road to the spot …
They
lay out there all day, suffering.
Some
of them made it back under cover of darkness …
I
felt like I knew him and this was the closest I could get to him …
I
don’t paint blood and gore …
It’s
the moment before all hell breaks loose.
Because
I’d found a photograph of Edward,
I
could paint him looking back one last time’ …
Looking
back to Slad, before stepping out to Hell.
With thanks to Sally Bailey, Stroud News. Private Edward Hogg is also
commemorated on the Roll of Honour in the parish church at Slad, as well as on
the war memorial. Purgatory is a copse above Slad. Paradise is near Painswick.
The only place in the UK where these names appear some 6 miles apart.
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