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sun, medals and a final word This issue of The Wipers Times will the last from No Man’s Land. It’s been a week filled with sunshine, sundowners and downpours. General Public and Major Chaos have retuned from whence they came and the designers are resting on their laurels or hiding in the shrubbery. The Soldiers’ Charity garden won a gold medal, which is slightly too large for attaching to uniforms but will be proudly displayed. Linda Snell visited from Ambridge, and was without doubt the most exciting visitor never to arrive, despite WT staff looking out for her. While the world outside carried on, the only election that mattered at the Chelsea Flower Show was the People’s Choice Awards. As The Wipers Times went to press, the results of the public vote were yet to be announced, but a project spokesman said ‘a win in the Peoples Choice Awards would be blooming marvellous.’
A B RAC E O F G RO U S E From the original Wipers Times. Monday 1st May 2916
Two papers on a single day Have roused my spirit to the fray. Muse mine, my double-barrelled gun ! And let us strafe them, either one.
Lindsey Hilsum
FLOWER OF T H E DAY
International Editor, Channel 4 News Five years before the outbreak of World War One, a skinny young man carrying a rucksack visited Crac des Chevaliers, the Crusader castle west of Homs in Syria. The 19 year archaeology student would soon become famous as Lawrence of Arabia, the British soldier-spy who fought with the Arabs against the Ottoman Turks. In March 2014, I retraced Lawrence’s steps, climbing the steep slope up to the castle he had described as ‘the most wholly admirable in the world.’ The village below lay in ruins, shop signs dangling, charred vehicle carcasses amongst the debris. The villagers had fled as forces loyal to President Bashar al Assad battled Islamist rebels who occupied the fortress for the past two years. The Syrian government bombarded the fortress from the air and some of the inner walls have been destroyed. Nonetheless, the massive outer fortifications have remained more or less intact. We clambered over great piles of rubble to reach the church built by the Crusaders in the 12th Century. Inside, belongings including combat trousers, cooking utensils and a child’s blanket decorated with cartoon animals were strewn across the floor - a sign that the rebels and their families had left in a hurry. Sunlight glimmered through a slit in the walls - a couple of weeks back, I thought, a jihadi used this as a sniper position, exactly as a crusader had fired arrows through it nine hundred years earlier. Syrian soldiers - the latest fighters to occupy the castle - walked past carrying wooden beds to their new billet. I wondered what Lawrence would have made of the scene. He was deeply patriotic, leaving the proceeds of his writing to the RAF Benevolent Fund. But he loved the Arabs he fought alongside and would surely have been horrified at the carnage in Syria today. Maybe he would have taken some comfort in the survival of the Crac des Chevaliers, which has outlasted generations of victors and vanquished.
Stellaria Graminea ‘Common Stitchwort’ is a flowering plant from the Caryphyllaceae family, found in meadows, open woodland and tracks. Rumours that this was the plant that inspired a popular Belgian lager are reassuringly false.
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