‘Up The Line’: Evening Performance in Brockley & Ladywell Cemeteries, 11th November

This is a guest post from John McKiernan (ex of Moonbow Jakes) about ‘Up the Line’ an event he is organising in Brockley and Ladywell Cemeteries for Armistice. The event will take place on 11.11.09 from 7.30 until 8.41 (1 hour 11 minutes).

“War is ultimately about death and destruction, avoiding war is by remembering the pain and suffering associated with it rather than victory or defeat. There is probably no more a war in history that teaches us this than the Great War.

With the passing of the last witnesses to WWI there appears a need to entrench the memory of this war, more than any other, on people of today. On all sides a whole generation was lost and to avoid repeating a mistake often means a strong reminding once in a while.

Brockley Cemetery is a beautiful, almost unaltered space, with two very poignant memorials to those who died from their wounds on their return to the UK during WWI. Local men in the main, from early teens to their forties. Many, if not most local people know little or nothing of the memorials or those who are engraved on the walls, including those who perished in Deptford during the first London Blitz of WWI from the Zeppelin attacks.