Red roses and a diamond ring

Red Roses and a Diamond Ring A Personal Story for Remembrance Day

Far away on a warm Sicilian hillside is a grave, an immaculate white headstone marks the spot. A young foot soldier of the London Irish Rifles lies peacefully there. He is not alone, we calculate about 300 others and there are other cemeteries, we know, other resting places where broken hearts and dreams lie. We know, we have met her friends, other war widows, each with their story to tell.

Our young Sicilian taxi driver Francesco aged 33 knows the way, he has been here twice bringing visitors ‘They usually come by coach’ he says, but sometimes they ask him to bring them but only to the gate, he has never been inside. This time the gate is closed to cars and we don’t know the way in or how to find the grave. He kindly volunteers to come with us and help us find it. We accept gratefully and after walking up the long drive and through the beautiful gateway, we all begin the search, Francesco is the one who finds it.

He stands in awe and in halting English asks ‘He was only 22? So young!’ Yes he was so young, and it broke her heart, she never got over it. A childhood friendship that grew to young love and marriage and ended in death and disaster only 15 months later. After the wedding she saw him only once more briefly during his first leave, then never again.

A quiet hillside, strangely silent, despite the major road that runs close by outside and with a surprising feeling of happiness love and peace. ‘Ceded to the people of Britain in grateful thanks for the liberation of their Country by the people of Italy’ We read. A jet flies low overhead but I do not think he and the others mind, in fact in my fancy I see him smiling, laughing glad that life has gone on, that it wasn’t all for nothing. Not a handsome man, but always smiling, laughing and to her he was the world.

The heavens open with a sudden flash of lightening and clash of thunder; leaving the fresh red roses purchased from

the florist in Catania, on the grave with our love, we make a dash back to the car and return to the town for coffee and shopping, a need for normality asserts itself. On the way back, Francesco quietly points out the Italian cemetery with its Baroque architecture and tells us there is a German one across the valley. As we pass by I think to myself ‘Evil has only one destination, death, both for the innocent and the perpetrators, such a tragedy, so much waste of young life.’

Later in the day, our cruise ship sails away taking us towards the thankfully now peaceful Aegean and Greece, but where we are very much aware, many other lives were lost and shattered.

Not my Father, for him a different kind of tragedy, the sights and sounds and experience of even the briefest tour of fighting duty in France brought on a nervous breakdown, which most likely today we would call ‘post traumatic stress syndrome’ but in his day was unknown and untreated and

turned to alcoholism which stayed with him for the rest of his life.

And what of her, the young girl recently married whose young husband lies on that Sicilian hillside? She will be 90 years old the week after Remembrance Sunday. Although she eventually remarried (my Father), like others we have met, it ended sadly in divorce and more heartache.

She has not forgotten, she has visited his grave twice since she was first able to go with the British Legion on the 50th anniversary of his death, but she was never able to take flowers. It was an escorted trip and as she doesn’t speak Italian. A fundamental human need to put flowers on the final resting place of a loved one. She cannot go herself now, the journey would be too much for her, so we went for her much to her delight and left him her love with the red roses.

What to buy her for her birthday? What does a 90 year old need? A diamond ring, she never had a real diamond.

‘Three diamonds on a twist was what I always dreamt of’ she said ‘Of course we couldn’t afford it what with the purchase tax at such a high rate it just wasn’t possible on a Lance Corporal’s pay’.

It took a lot of searching but eventually I found a jewellers with a moderately priced ‘three diamonds on a twist’ gold ring. We think he would approve.

The words on his grave stone say ‘As long as memories live, we will remember’. She has never forgotten, we too will always remember.

Lynda Christiensen 10th October 2009