Remembering a tiger in the family

It is Remembrance Sunday and a perpetually noisy world falls silent for two minutes in gratitude to those who made the ultimate sacrifice. 

The cenotaph stands to the right of the ancient church, carved from sandstone, matching the wall of the church. It is decked in wreaths of poppies, the unmistakeable symbol of remembrance. 

Field poppies (Papaver rhoeas) spring up all over the battle fields of Europe. The seeds can lie dormant for years, disturbed soil encouraging them into germination, providing a surreal contrast to those battlefields. I knew a man who knew those battlefields; he was my grandfather, Alfred Beards. He, like many others, lied about his age and took the King's shilling. 

His regiment was The Royal Leicestershire Regiment. Their previous campaign in India led to them being awarded the cap badge of a royal tiger. Every soldier of the regiment from then on became known as Leicester tigers. 

He stood at the first act of remembrance, the horror of those battlefields. Freshly remembered. My son and I stand where he and his children stood, history repeating itself. Just as it did in 1939. 

(The tiger, Alfred) 

I have stood in hail, rain, snow and sunshine on Remembrance Sundays. Today, it is raining heavily, the silence broken only by the sound of raindrops falling on umbrellas. The remaining leaf canopy of the two sycamores that flank the cenotaph hangs heavy with the rainfall. Some leaves still stoically verdant, the majority dropping to the sodden flagstones. Their various hues of brown soon to be trampled. 

The occasion is about remembering, and I remember the days of my childhood when the local regiment used to parade: the base drummer resplendent wearing a leopard skin, spit and polish, cap badges and medals gleaming, standing on a piece of cardboard found by my father to insulate my frozen feet from the snow that fell the night before one parade. 

But mostly, I remember fondly the boy who left for France and returned a tiger. 

In remembrance of Private Alfred Beards 1899-1972

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