One week on after Brexit and it’s the centenary of the Battle of the Somme. 1 July 1916 was the start of a battle that would result in 73,077 men loosing their lives. It worries me that we don’t seem to learn from history. It is understandable that we have days of remembrance but it is harder to understand why we seem to keep repeating the mistakes of the past. I have studied history, sociology and psychology which have given me a framework to navigate this ever changing world but as I reflect on the past week and the history of Europe I struggle to be optimistic.
The First World War once seemed like a long time ago but as I get older it feels like recent history. The Second World War ended eighteen years before I was born and as child I explored bomb sites that still occupied some parts of East London. In the autumn of 2011 I was in Northern France working as a presenter for the Discovery Channel making a documentary programme about a Czechoslovakian pilot who was shot down in his spitfire. Our research showed that the pilot managed to parachute out of his plane and spent the rest of the war in a German prisoner of war camp. We were looking for his plane. At the crash site we began digging up the past. I had been part of the Discovery team that had recovered several crashed spitfires and everything had gone to plan. This dig turned out to be different.
We found a plane but it wasn’t the plane we thought we would find. We also found the remains of a pilot. Furthermore, amongst the wreckage, we found the pilots id tag. Andy Saunders, the teams historian, quickly identified who we had found. His name was SGT William James Smith or Bill Smith as he became known to us. The twists and turns in this story became even more extraordinary when old news film footage was found of Bill Smith and his squadron shortly before he was killed. This all contributed to a good tv documentary but most importantly we found a pilot who had been missing for over 70 years.
Bill Smith was 24 when he died. Bill was Australian and came to Britain to fight against the fascists. Despite the time lapse we found out that Bill had three siblings, still alive, a brother and two sisters living in Australia. On hearing the news of our discovery Bill’s brother said I have been waiting all my life for this and I can now die in peace.
Sgt William James Smith was given a military burial in Hardifort, Nord, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, France on 19 April 2012. His family came over from Australia and myself and the Discovery film crew made the short trip from England. Today I’m thinking of Bill Smith, and the thousands who were slaughtered in the Battle of the Somme. I’m also thinking of Jo Cox and her family and hoping we can all learn from the past.
