The Moon Which Ripens the Wheat

Original oil and acrylic on board by Andrew Gault

24x30cm unframed 

More by Andrew Gault

I was in France with friends and we drove into the little village of Albert in the Somme on a journey I have made many times.

As we sat in the sun enjoying our lunch and talking of great grandfathers and great uncles and saying their names out loud to hear them drift away on the breeze, I thought forward to my great nephews and great grandsons and wondered if they too would sit with friends and say my name, long after I have left.

For a moment, I felt suspended between memory and hope: between those who had gone before me, and the hope for those who may come after.

Tom Kettle 9th Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers, a Dubliner died in 1916 on the Somme. He wrote:

“So here, while the mad guns curse overhead, and tired men sigh, with mud for couch and floor, know that we fools, now with the foolish dead, died not for Flag, nor King, nor Emperor, but for a dream born in a herdsman’s shed, and for the sacred scripture of the poor.”

Despite being a strong advocate for Irish Home Rule and a friend to many involved in the 1916 Easter Rising, he felt compelled to fight on the Western Front to protect the rights of small nations and promote a shared European peace.

Say his name out loud and hear it drifting away on the breeze.