Still remembering

We were back in Bristol again early in November on family business. One day saw us walking along the bottom of Park street and, as we approached the front of the Cathedral there, on College Green, we saw hundreds of 'action man' like figures laid out in long neat rows. But all shrouded, neatly wrapped as though for burial.

The 'exhibition' for want of a better word, is called '19240 Shrouds of the Somme' and marks the end of that battle 100 years ago.
Artist Rob Heard came up with the idea while watching soldiers returning from Afghanistan on TV when he was recovering from a car crash. It set him thinking how difficult it is to visualise the vast numbers involved in the Battle of the Somme. Each 12 inch plastic figure is in a hand stitched shroud and linked to a fatality on 1st July 1916 using records from the commonwealth war graves commission. Rob says he tried not to lose each individual in the numbers.
The exhibition was first displayed at Exeter at the beginning of July.
In Bristol, the shrouded figures were the focus of the Remembrance Day services. Everyone stood around the square of figures, members of the all the armed forces were represented. A senior naval officer led the two minutes silence and the dean of the cathedral read prayers.
Along one side of the square a long tent held lists of names all in alphabetical order, the print small. It really brought home the vast unnecessary loss of life that war brings.
Rob's next project is to create 72246 shrouds for the men whose bodies were never recovered in time for the centenary of the end of the war in 1918, and in some way bring them home
(www.thesomme19240.co.uk)