It was cold, and quite drizzly, because this is the part of France that's so far to the north-west it's practically England. Early on the morning of our last day in France, we walked to Thiepval Memorial, which is a beautiful monument to the 72,500 people who went missing in the Somme campaign and never got a proper grave. In front of the monument was a perfectly mown sweep of grass, bright with dew, lined with an avenue of trees. Behind us, a clear view over the hills where the German trench system used to be. It was so early in the morning that the sky was grey and the mist still clung on to the trees.
I was walking with my new friend Matt, who is one of the shortest thirteen-year-olds on the planet, because his body doesn't actually have any growth hormones and he has to inject it into himself. On the other hand, when he talks it is like having words fired at you from a machine gun at a million miles an hour. But even he was quiet now. It was one of the quietest places I have ever been. For once there were no random Canadian tourists or badly-behaved students screaming, or making other people scream. It was as though the thing was so huge and solemn that it sucked all of the sound out of its surroundings. I enjoyed the silence. And, rising in the mists, the red and white monument was so beautiful.
I said so to Matt, who said 'Yes, that's ironic, isn't it? Because it's pretty, but...' which actually almost brought me to tears.
We walked up to the memorial and laid a wreath of poppies on it, and one girl read out a military remembrance poem - the one that gets read out every Remembrance Day. Then we did one minute of silence for the missing, before being free to look at all the names carved into the columns. It's strange, because although I've said that there were 72,500 names, you can't really picture that until you actually see them and get struck by how massive the number of missing people are.
I don't know if you can see this properly, but it's the names of all the people from the Royal Berkshire Regiment who went missing, which is where I come from. To give you an idea of the scale, hopefully, this is one half of one face of a column. There are four faces inscribed with names on each column, and sixteen columns altogether, meaning that this photo shows one hundred-and-twenty-eighth of all the names.
Some people had left poppies or little wooden crosses around, saying things like 'Lance-Corporal S. James, from your great-great-great grandaughter' which was touching. Or sometimes there was just a name.
And that is the most amazing thing I have done when I am 13. I went to France and saw the Thiepval memorial for the 72,500 missing people.
P.S. Thanks for reading this! I saw that my page had had 3 views and that blew me away!
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