Lest We Forget (1/4)

This is Peter Corlett's 1989 diorama, "Man in the Mud" in the WW1 Gallery.

The diorama consists of a very large, curved photomural of a desolate landscape of guns, broken equipment and mud. Mud is everywhere. The foreground is a muck heap of mud, a broken duckboard and polluted water. On a little hummock sits a soldier in deep despair, elbows on knees, his face in his hands. What this soldier has seen, cannot be unseen. He will see this scene for the rest of his life, whether his eyes be open or shut. Eternal vigilance.

Each year, in early spring, I spend an afternoon in the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. It is a sombre afternoon, with much shaking of head, wrinkling of brow, and heart-felt gratitude.

This post is dedicated to: Claude Gosford Honeyman (1891-1940) D Coy, 1st Battalion, AIF Enlisted 31 Aug 1914 Gallipoli Lone Pine Pozieres The Somme Discharged "Medically Unfit", 25 June, 1918 1st cousin of my Great-Grand-Father