It was an early start today - I was out the door just after 7.30, catching the Victoria Line to Oxford Circus and the Bakerloo to Paddington. It was already very busy, but there was a laurel at the end of my journey to make braving rush hour a little bearable. It look me a little questioning of staff before I knew whether or not my journey was in vain - it wasn’t - and then I proceeded to sit on Platform One for an hour because I’d massively overestimated how early the train would enter the station. And what locomotive, pray tell, would I go to all this trouble for?
If you know your trains, you could probably make an educated guess.
Built a century ago this year, No. 4472 - ahem, 60103 Flying Scotsman needs absolutely no introduction. Today she is the Kardashian of locomotives - she is famous for being famous. Unlike the Kardashians, that fame is well earned - namesake of the famed Flying Scotsman express, first non-stop run from London to Edinburgh in 1928, first (sort of) authenticated 100mph by a steam locomotive in 1934, one of the first privately preserved steam locomotives. She toured the United States (even though we don’t like to talk about how that one nearly ended) and Australia, making the longest non-stop run by a steam locomotive ever between Parkes and Broken Hill. To her detractors, she’s the ‘flying moneypit,’ bankrupting every owner since 1963. To her fans, she’s the most famous steam locomotive in the world, Sir Nigel Gresley’s masterpiece. And at long, long last, I have seen her in steam.
Basically, do you know how monarchists get really excited about seeing the King? This is my version of that.
After her departure at 9.40, I headed on the Circle Line to Sloane Square, walking through Chelsea and past the famed hospital there to the National Army Museum. The NAM is basically the cooler, hipper IWM, in my opinion. It perhaps benefits from a narrow subject matter; specifically Britain, and specifically the British Army. Without becoming too complicated, it does a much better job at contextualising its exhibits than the IWM, without shying away from the controversies and horrors of war. Do you think, for example, that the Australian War Memorial would stock a book about the massacre of Surafend, in the way the NAM stocks one on the British organised mass slaughter of Amritsar?
When I talk about museums, as you probably know by now, I like to mention an exhibit that struck me, and the exhibit in question at the NAM was more recent than you might expect. While I could discuss the saw that amputated the Earl of Uxbridge’s leg again - the fact that it still exists makes me very happy - I’ll instead mention a ruined L85 rifle from the Middle East, which was recovered from a vehicle destroyed by an IED - none of the passengers survived. Jay Winter has said that if one shows a weapon in a museum, they ought to show what it does. Here, in this ruined weapon, we see both at once. We don’t need to see the blood and bones of the soldiers; from this broken rifle, we can fill in the gaps as to the horrific power of explosives ourselves.
Also, the NAM cafe does a mean scrambled eggs.
After the Army Museum, I headed back to the tube and caught the Circle Line again to St. James’ Park, where I walked to the Guards Museum. This is a small museum that people don’t really know about, and that surprises me as it’s literally right across the road from Buckingham Palace - it’s in Wellington Barracks, where the guards march from during the Changing of the Guard.
The Guards Museum is a very old-school and classic museum; a British Army regimental museum in the same old style that I love so very, very much. The museum is both wide in scope and intimate in subject matter - this isn’t the story of the army or the wars it fought, but the part played by the five regiments of the Foot Guards - the Grenadiers, the Coldstream, the Scots Guard, the Irish Guard and the Welsh Guard. For the majority of the British Army’s history, there were only the first three - oddly, the ‘1st’ (Grenadier) Foot Guards are actually the youngest, but as they were Charles II’s personal guard, they got to be senior after the Restoration in 1660.
There were a lot of very interesting things in this museum, but I’m going to highlight something very boring instead. There’s a shako worn by a soldier of the Coldstream Guards in the late 1820s - it’s called a bell-top shako. Guards shakos from this period are very rare, because they were introduced in 1829 and dropped in 1831, when all of the Guards regiments adopted the bearskin cap of the Grenadiers. In fact, this shako was so rare that I didn’t actually know it existed - I’d assumed that the bearskins were adopted soon after Waterloo, but it seems the Coldstream and Scots Guards kept the shakoes of the regular infantry for just a little bit longer. This is a completely, utterly useless factoid, but I find it absolutely fascinating.
Across from the Guards Museum is the Guards Chapel, and to the uninitiated it looks strangely modern. Surely regiments as old as the Guards ought to have a similarly old chapel, right? Well, they did - until the morning of 18th June 1944, when it suffered a direct hit from a German V-1 flying bomb in the middle of a morning service. 121 were killed, and over 140 injured. The new chapel is not only a memorial to the men of the Household Division (the Foot Guards and the Household Cavalry), but to those killed in the bombing. I was initially the only visitor, and by the time I left only a small group of Americans - who I will say were very respectful - had joined me there. Dozens of regimental colours from throughout the Guards histories hang from the walls. I almost felt like an intruder in another family’s mausoleum.
I’m not religious, but for some reason I was moved to light a candle.
I walked from there, back past Buckingham Palace and down Lower Grovesnor Place, to a small memorial on the side of an intersection near Victoria. This is a curious little monument - it’s explicitly a memorial to the Great War, yet the Tommy on top is joined by a pair of riflemen from the Napoleonic and Crimean Wars respectively. This is the memorial to the Rifle Brigade, the progeny of the famed 95th Rifles of Wellington’s time (although a number of Rifle Brigade battalions could trace their heritage to the 60th Rifles as well.) After the Second World War, it was adapted to commemorate the riflemen lost in that conflict.
I visit a lot of memorials because I think they are interesting, or because I simply find them in the wild. I hunted down this one because it was important to me personally. This isn’t because I think the 95th were cool or because I watch a lot of Sharpe, or because green is my favourite colour and riflemen wore green uniforms. My nan had two uncles, one who fought in the First World War and one who fought in the Second. Both were riflemen - the first of the ‘Hackney Rifles’ and the second of the 7th Rifle Brigade. The first was wounded at Third Ypres, although I’m not certain how severely. The second still lies to this day in Florence, lost in the attacks on the Gothic Line in September 1944. It’s silly, and probably vulgar, but I’ve always seen the Rifle Brigade as ‘ours.’ I probably confused a lot of London commuters by pointing at a random monument in the middle of the city, repeating over again - ‘that’s us. That’s us.’
Yet it is us. The memory agents, the people who lived through the First World War, are all dead. The people who lived through the Second will still follow. It is now up to us to interpret their memory, their experiences, their histories and their stories. We have a responsibility to them.
Like it or not, this is us.
I then wrecked this profound emotional moment by having a big fanboy moment over a Routemaster bus, and then I walked back to the hotel. After a brief rest, I reunited with my mum and stepdad, who had been very kindly invited by my professor to join the group at the garden party of the Britain-Australia Society at the Royal Over-Seas League’s London HQ. It was all very sophisticated, with a lot of the great and good - and Joe Hockey - present, but I think it just didn’t quite gel with me. We stayed for a socially acceptable amount of time, then went back to Victoria Station and grabbed some McDonalds before parting.
We will reunite in Paris, but there’s a long road ahead to get there…
