Day Sixteen: Tuesday, 16 November 2010

I woke to a very cold November morning: my next-to-last day in London.   The sun was shining, which made the cold much easier to bear.   This day, I was off to visit one of London's most interesting sights: the Imperial War Museum.

After I showered and dressed, I stopped at a nearby Pret A Manger shop (not the large one near Victoria Station--but a smaller one closer to the hotel) for breakfast, before joining the morning throng heading to Westminster.

I decided to make a stop again at Westminster Abbey's 'Field of Remembrance', to take some more photos of the memorials, such as the one for The Queen's Royal Lancers. (photo left).   Workers on their way to the Houses of Parliament or Whitehall also stopped to look at the memorials.

This morning, I decided to take a scenic route, through Victoria Tower Gardens, on the west side of the Houses of Parliament.   There were still leaves on the trees, and several walkers and joggers were out and about too.   The walkers were taking lots of photos across the River Thames.  The light was perfect for 'atmospheric' photos!

The River Thames was covered in fog, caused by the warmer water and cold air above.   It really made for some wonderful photo opportunities.   Everything looked so mystical, almost like one of Turner's water scape paintings.   The buildings seemed to literally float out of the fog: Lambeth Palace, the London residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion, looked like it had stepped out of a medieval picture (photo right).

The London Eye, further downstream, looked like a toy wheel climbing above the fog.

During the early stages of my walk, I came upon a very interesting sculpture--and a very famous one at that: French sculptor Auguste Rodin's The Burghers of Calais (photo below left).   It depicts an incident in 1347 in Calais, France, during the Hundred Years' War .  

Calais had been under siege by the English king, Edward III, for over a year.   After Edward's victory over the French at the Battle of Crecy in 1346, he laid siege to Calais, but the French King, Philip IV, ordered the town held at all costs.   But Philip could not lift the siege, and starvation started to take its toll of the inhabitants, and eventually it was decided to surrender the town.

King Edward offered to spare the town, if any six of its leading inhabitants would surrender themselves to him, presumably to be executed.   He demanded these six men walk out of Calais almost naked, wearing nooses around their necks, and carrying the keys to the town.   Led by Eustache de Saint Pierre, one of Calais' wealthiest citizens, he and the five other emaciated men stripped to their breeches, and walked to the city gates.

At that moment, Edward's Queen, Philippa of Hainault, intervened and persuaded her husband not to execute these men, as she felt their deaths would become a bad omen for their unborn child.   So Edward showed mercy, and the men's lives were spared.

Rodin completed his original of the sculpture in 1889, and it can be seen today in Calais' town square.   The sculptor only made twelve copies of his work, and they are displayed in Paris, New York City, Washington DC, Copenhagen, Philadelphia, Tokyo, Stanford University in California, Belgium, Switzerland, Seoul--and here in Victoria Tower Gardens, London.  This particular copy was cast in 1908, and placed in the Gardens in 1911.

It's a pretty awesome sculpture; I've always been fond of Rodin's work, such as The Thinker and The Kiss.

Leaving Victoria Tower Gardens, I walked up a flight of stairs onto Lambeth Bridge, and started my journey to the Imperial War Museum.   I passed by commuters walking to their jobs in central London.

I also stopped along the way, to take a couple of photos of the Houses of Parliament, enshrouded in the river fog (photo left).   Without boasting, I think they came out rather well.

At the south end of Lambeth Bridge sits the London residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury: Lambeth Palace.   It was situated behind a high wall, so I couldn't see much of it.   I did, however, glance through a couple of open gates, to glimpse its gardens, and several of its outer buildings.   I'm not certain if the general public has access to the gardens.

The Imperial War Museum is located on Lambeth's main thoroughfare: Lambeth Road.   It is both a residential neighborhood, and also hosted a few small businesses, like restaurants.   Some of the residences were post-war high-rises called 'council estates' (so called because the local town council runs them; I think they're sort of like public housing in the US).   The ones I saw looked neat, if not very picturesque.   A couple of smaller hotels could also be found here.

After about a half-hour's walk, I finally came upon the Imperial War Museum, which sits in a large park (photo left).   The Museum was founded in 1917, during the First World War, to document the war effort of Great Britain and her Empire..   It was first housed in the Crystal Palace at Sydenham Hill, and was opened to the public in 1920.

In 1924, the Museum moved to the Imperial Institute in South Kensington, and eventually acquired its present home in 1936.   It occupies the site of the former Bethlem Royal Hospital in Southwark--which had become a notorious mental institution.   It's where the world bedlam comes from: a corruption of the name Bethlem.

Royal Navy guns, taken from two ships: the battleship HMS Ramillies and the monitor HMS Roberts.   

I tried taking a photo of the guns from the front, but the rising sun behind it made that difficult; so I had to take the photo from the backside (photo right).

I arrived around 9 am, but the Museum didn't open until 10, so I wandered around the park in the rather frigid air.   The grass glistened with frosted dew, as I watched a couple of people play with their dogs.   I chatted with one lady who was tossing a big toy to her very frisky dog.   The dog was definitely getting a lot of exercise, just racing about.

The Museum also has its own chunk of the infamous Berlin Wall on the grounds (photo left).   So many different places have pieces of this once-deadly Wall in their possession: the West Point Museum at the United States Military Academy in New York state, and even a Western New York office building--just to name a couple!

I also found an interesting monument (photo right) on the grounds.   It was dedicated to the memory of the 20 million citizens of the then-Soviet Union who died in the Second World War (the monument was erected before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990).   The inscription was in both English and Russian, and the monument was decorated with flowers, and a red-white-and-blue Russian flag made of flowers.   They must have been laid the day before: Remembrance Sunday.

Very soon, the Museum opened its doors, and in I went.   It's quite a compact place inside, for such a massive building outside: its ground-floor exhibit space was full of military artefacts.

The first room I entered centered on the recent discovery of a mass burial ground containing Australian and British soldiers near the town of Fromelles, in France: scene of a really horrific First World War battle on 19-20 July 1916.  It was the first full-scale battle fought by the First Australian Imperial Force; it's estimated that 5500 Australian, and 2000 British, troops were killed and wounded.   The Australian losses in this one battle were equivalent to the total Aussie losses in the Boer War, Korean and Vietnam Wars combined.

This room described the efforts being made to identify the dead here as much as possible, and give them a proper burial in the new Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery being created near their original burial site, at Pheasant Wood.   I saw artefacts that were found in the grave: some personal items, utensils--things like that.

A few of the dead have been identified, thanks to DNA.   But I don't know how many more will be; the efforts will be ongoing for the next few years.  But at least these men will not be forgotten.

In the main ground-floor exhibit area, I saw some really awesome stuff.   Above my head, I could see several First and Second World War aircraft: a Royal Flying Corps (predecessor to the Royal Air Force) Sopwith Camel (photo left), an RAF Spitfire fighter, a German Heinkel fighter, and a US 8th Air Force P-51 Mustang fighter.  

And standing on the floor and towering above me was a WW2 German V-2 rocket, with its side open and showing the inner workings of this deadly weapon, which rained destruction on London in 1944 (photo right).   Hitler thought this 'wonder-weapon' would be the thing that would win the war for Germany.   But it was implemented too late to affect the war's eventual outcome.

And nearby was a more recent reminder of war: the remnants of a car from Baghdad, Iraq, after a homicide bomb had gone off in it.   The 'car'--or what was left of it--was totally flattened and mashed down, with just the frame showing.   I wonder how many innocent Iraqis had gotten killed standing or walking nearby.

In the back of the room, I saw a US Jeep, a British 'Churchill' and US 'Sherman' tank from the Second World War--and the personal Western Desert campaign tank (it is a Grant tank) of British Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery himself.  

The top entrance of the tank had a sign with the name 'MONTY' in fancy script--with a photo of the man himself surveying the ground from that very entrance during the Second World War (photo left).

Montgomery is a person one either admires or loathes: from what I have read about him, he was much admired by his men in the British Eighth Army in North Africa--and he was a real handful for US generals like Dwight D. Eisenhower and George S. Patton.  No way one can be neutral about Montgomery....

Upon leaving the main exhibit area, I had to make a decision, as to which major war to explore.   Would it be the First World War, or the Second?   It wasn't a hard decision this time: I chose the First World War, since this UK and Europe trip had a special concentration on that conflict, after visiting Ypres, Vimy Ridge, and Tyne Cot Cemetery in Belgium.   Not to mention the fact that my mother's family was living in Germany between 1914 and 1918.   And my mother herself was born in 1917, and she and her family endured much suffering with the rest of the German civilian population.   I felt that I needed to learn more about the First World War, to honor her memory, and that of her German family.

So--off I went to explore the First World War exhibit.   I found lots of things to look at: uniforms  of the various Allied (photo right) and Central Powers armies; military equipment, flags, weapons, diaries and other writings.   I found painted portraits of famous figures, such as the German Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg (photo left).

Some of the displays were very poignant: there was one describing the story of the British nurse Edith Cavell (photo below right).   She was born near Norwich, England, a daughter of the local vicar, and received nurses' training in London before being recruited as the matron of a new nursing school in Brussels, Belgium.  She was visiting her mother in Norwich when the First World War broke out, and she decided to return to Brussels, and her nursing school.

When the Germans occupied Brussels in late 1914, Nurse Cavell began sheltering British soldiers and helping them to escape to neutral Holland; in late 1914, she became part of an underground resistance network which helped over 200 Allied soldiers to escape--which was in violation of German military law.  

Nurse Cavell was arrested in August 1915, and charged with harboring British soldiers.   She was imprisoned and court-martialed for aiding British and French soldiers, as well as young Belgian men, to get out of Belgium and go to Britain.

Nurse Cavell was condemned to death, and shot by a German firing squad on 12 October 1915.   She was buried near St Gilles Prison, where she had been kept, but after the war her body was brought back to Britain.   After a memorial service in Westminster Abbey, Nurse Edith Cavell was buried in Norwich, at Life's Green.   Her death was used by the Allies in their propaganda campaign against the Germans, as an example of their cruelty towards women and children.

Edith Cavell's strong Anglican beliefs compelled her to aid both German and Allied wounded during the war.   Among the many memorials to her is a statue adjacent to Trafalgar Square in London, near the church of St Martin-In-the-Fields.   Engraved on the monument's base is part of a quote attributed to Nurse Cavell: "Patriotism is Not Enough; I must have no bitterness nor hatred towards anyone".   She said this to an Anglican chaplain, who had been allowed to visit her in prison, and give her Communion before her death.

In the display case, there was a photo of Nurse Cavell with her two dogs.   One of them, named "Jack", is shown stuffed and mounted in the display case (photo left).   After his mistress' death, Jack was brought to England and adopted by Mary the Princess Royal, daughter of King George V.  

Also in the display was the cap worn by Nurse Cavell while she was in prison, along with some lace.

Nearby was a very interesting display of trench signs made by Allied soldiers--to keep themselves, and their comrades, from getting lost on the battlefield.   Some were cynically amusing, like "Suicide Corner"or "Tattenham Corner"; others pointed towards various towns near the battlefield.   These signs covered one big wall (photo left).

 Nearby, I also saw a display that included a small square of painted wood, which was a tiny remnant from the destroyed medieval Cloth Hall in Ypres: the very same restored Cloth Hall I'd seen the week before.  One can make out the Lion of Flanders symbol in the photo (right).

Some of the displays were amusing: there was one with a collection of "Toby mugs": collectible porcelain mugs portraying famous people in the war (photo left).   I could make out Kaiser Wilhelm II, Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Josef, British Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig--and possibly British Secretary of State for War Lord Kitchener.   They were a cross between true portraits, and caricature.

And to top it all off, I also discovered the amusing side of the First World War section: within a display describing the effects of the war on the British civilian population, there was this sign (photo left)!   Today, we might see it as a form of class snobbery; during the war, however, it was really serious business.

When I came out of this section, I decided to head three floors up, to visit a special exhibit on the Nazi Holocaust.   There was a sign at the doorway stating that it was not suitable for very young children to see, as it was rather graphic in spots.   And no photography was allowed in this exhibit.

Even though I have seen and read a lot about the Holocaust--and visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem, Israel, and the Dachau concentration camp in Germany--I wanted to visit this exhibit.   I heard recordings of speeches by Adolf Hitler and other Nazi leaders, and watched videotapes of survivors' accounts telling the stories of their families' fates.   On display were many letters and documents, and horrific things like instruments of torture used by the Nazis, and parts of a railroad cattle car used to transport Jewish people to the death camps.   There was even a full-scale replica of the death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau: right down to the crematorium and the rail tracks leading to the gas chambers.

This exhibit also covered the history of anti-Semitism dating back to the end of the Roman Empire, when the Roman church created the first Jewish ghettoes in Italy, other forms of discrimination against Jews in European society, and the terrible massacres inflicted on the Jewish people by so-called 'christians' (small 'c' used purposely).   I also saw some very graphic photos of some of the atrocities committed by the Nazis on Jewish people: mass graves with hundreds of bodies, remnants of the dead in the crematoria after the Nazis fled.

No wonder the Museum did not recommend a visit here by young children.   And there were a lot of school groups in the Museum at the time; I heard their shouting and running about, while in the First World War display.   But there was none of that coming from this Exhibit.

As I was leaving the Holocaust exhibit, I noticed a list of names that formed an Advisory Board which created and supervised the exhibit.   On that list was my friend Sir Martin Gilbert, who is a leading historian on the Holocaust.   He and his fellow Board members did an excellent job on this exhibit.

By this time, it was around lunchtime--and I was in great need of a rest room.   Plus, my feet were really killing me, after walking on concrete floors for a couple of hours.   I did find a W.C. (the British call them "Water Closets"), and was able to get off my feet for a few minutes.   That felt great, I can tell you!

When I emerged from the W.C., I stopped by the Museum's Gift Shop and bought a few things: several fridge magnets, a First World War music CD, and a tiny bear wearing a pilot's suit.

I dodged the schoolkids flying round the shop, and decided it was time to head back to central London.  I had a marvelous time at the Imperial War Museum!   If one is really into military history, this is the place to go in London.

I took my time retracing my steps along Lambeth Road, and across Lambeth Bridge.   I walked along Millbank Street, and stopped in a park next to Westminster Abbey, where I sat down and pulled off my shoes to rub my aching feet.   I watched the traffic roar by for a little bit, and took a couple more photos of Westminster Hall across the road.

 Eventually I got up and headed for the Abbey, where I bought a muffin and some lemonade from a stand outside the Abbey precincts.  It was around 2 pm, and I was ravenous with hunger.   I'd not eaten since breakfast!   While sitting under a nearby tree to eat, one or two pigeons flew down to look for crumbs.  I tossed a few bits to one-and soon I was surrounded by a flock of the creatures, flying round my head (I could swear I felt a wing brush past my face!)!!!   They were a bit too close for comfort, and I finished my food quickly--and demanded the pigeons "GO AWAY!"

My hunger pangs now assuaged, I got up from my seat and walked back down Whitehall, to the Horse Guards Museum, where another group of tourists gathered to get photos of the beautiful black horses, and their riders, in their guardposts.   I got a few more photos of the horses, for good measure (left and right).   The Blues and Royals were on duty today, wearing their bright red cloaks.

I then retraced my steps back towards the Houses of Parliament--but turned onto King Charles Street, to go to the Churchill War Rooms.   When I'd had breakfast with Sir Martin Gilbert the previous week, we had made plans to meet at the Churchill War Rooms, where he would take me on a personal tour.  It was going to take place around 4 pm, so we arranged to meet near the entrance of the museum.  I got there a bit early, so I sat near a memorial to the victims of a terror bombing in Bali in October 2002, to wait for Sir Martin.   There were a lot of Government staff members out and about, so I felt safe.

I also noticed pelicans sitting on an island (photo left) in nearby St James's Park.   What the heck were pelicans doing in chilly London, in November?  And where did they go, when winter would inevitably arrive?

Four o'clock came and went.   And no sign of Sir Martin.   When I think about it now, I wonder why I didn't call his number on my mobile phone.   But I didn't.   I didn't find out until after my return to the US what had happened: he had been held up with work on the Iraq War Inquiry, and had misplaced my mobile number.   He emailed me to say he wouldn't be able to come--but since I had no email access, I never got the message until well after the fact.   He felt badly about being unable to guide me on the Churchill War Rooms tour.   And so did I.

I waited as long as I dared, as it was getting dark, and eventually gave up.   I decided then to attend Choral Evensong at Westminster Abbey.   And I'm glad I did!  The service didn't start until 5 pm, so I had a little time to visit the Abbey's Bookshop again, where I bought more stuff--including a collection of magnets containing Shakespearean curses!   It was hard not to bust out laughing at some of them ("Thou cream-faced loon!" has to be one of my favorites).   And what were Shakespearean curses doing in a church bookshop??

I then stuffed my purchases in my backpack, and left the Bookshop to enter the Abbey at the West Door.   There was already a good-sized group waiting to go inside.   And also out on the street facing the Abbey were several engines of the London Fire Brigade!   I did see a couple of Fire Brigade members enter the Abbey in full kit.   But no smoke or (heaven forbid) fire was found.  Maybe it was a false alarm?   Eventually the All-Clear was given, and we went into the Abbey for Evensong.

I followed the crowd through the Nave (giving a tiny wave to the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior) and then into the Choir, where we were seated in the stalls.   I was directed to the top row and sat in the Commonwealth High Commissioner's stall; another person near me sat in the Canadian High Commissioner's stall.   I figured there were around 100 people in all in attendance; some were seated in chairs situated below the High Altar.

At 4:45, the organist in his high perch above the Choir softly played a selection to get us into the proper frame of mind.   My own mind was taken up with glancing around the Choir, and up to the ceiling.

Then, about ten small boys dressed in red robes, white surplices, and ruffs round their necks entered the Choir silently, and took their places in stalls opposite me.   Suddenly, I heard male voices in song coming from the vicinity of the West Door: the men and boys of the Abbey Choir, processing in to take their places for Evensong.   They began with an Introit, sung in German, by Johannes Brahms.   It was followed by Versicles and Responses composed by an Elizabethan composer named Thomas Morley; an arrangement of Psalm 37--and a Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis arranged by one of my favorite English church composers, Thomas Tallis.   The Choir sang this a cappella, and it was absolutely heavenly!

An Anthem followed, sung in Latin by the Choir, by the Elizabethan-era composer John Taverner; it included a prayer for Queen Elizabeth I.   This was followed by a spoken prayer, for which the congregation knelt; those of us in the stalls had to pull out narrow kneelers situated in front of us--and do so without making a lot of unnecessary noise.   Not an easy thing to do.   And the kneelers were narrow; I had to make what is laughingly called 'the Anglican crouch': half-sitting, half-kneeling.

The Prayer was followed by a response version of Psalm 39: the boys would chant one verse, and the men would respond with the next.   No instrument was played.   It made me think back to when there were monks present at Westminster Abbey: this is how they would sing the Liturgy of the Hours together: morning, noon and night.   The congregation stood at the end for the "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost..." prayer.   This was followed by a final Hymn, and then the choir filed out silently.   The congregation sat for a few moments of reflection, before filing out of the Abbey.

Strange thing is: the congregation didn't sing at all in this service.   But who needed to, when there was this magnificent Abbey Choir in full voice?   I felt literally enveloped in their singing, accompanied by a powerful sense of peace; I also felt I was participating in a service going back hundreds of years, when there were monks here in the Abbey.  

 It was an incredible and moving experience for me.   And I am so glad I attended Choral Evensong at Westminster Abbey.

As I followed the participants out the West Door, I inconspicuously threw a kiss to the Unknown Warrior and wished him "Good Night", and I shook hands with one of the participating clergy and thanked him for the service.  I then went out into the London night, for the walk back to my hotel.   I was jarred back into the modern world with the car and foot traffic.   But that sense of peace didn't leave me the rest of the evening.  I got some dinner, and turned in for the night.

All in all: it was another great day.   I knew the following day would be my last on this visit, and I faced it with mixed emotions.   But that's for another blog post.

One thing I have forgotten to write about: when I returned to my room and turned the TV on, the BBC News started off with some very happy news: Prince William and his longtime girlfriend Kate Middleton finally announced their engagement this day!!   I was absolutely floored by this news; I threw my arms in the air and said "Hurrah--ABOUT TIME!"   What a way to end the day!