One rainswept Sunday in January, the Morecambe Bay siren rang for high tide. The storm clouds grew darker. No matter… At Arnside, there's always the legendary junk shop, full of forgotten lives. SIX NOMADS IN NORMANDY perched on top of an unsteady pile of books. D-Day, surely? Or Dad's Army? But the date was MCMXII…
1912 was the year Titanic sank. Captain Scott reached the South Pole, dying on the return journey. Britain was beleaguered by coal strikes, dock strikes, train strikes. The country was barely recovering from years of recession. The Royal Flying Corps was founded. In the U.S., Albert Berry parachuted from a moving plane. In Birmingham, Jack Judge and Harry Williams wrote a music hall song. The title? 'It's a Long Way to Tipperary'. And six adventurous young people created this unique memoir, desktop publishing, vintage MCMXII.
Between dozens of photos and postcards, the Nomads' story is recorded, sometimes slipping into French and a few words of Latin. Very neatly, in blue ink, the accents have been included. Carefree in the French countryside, six young people had a story to tell, adventures to remember for a lifetime, couldn't know that their whole world was about to end. Landing at Le Havre, after an overnight Channel crossing, they head for Brittany, on foot.
One of the first photos in the book is captioned 'Sac a dos'. The word 'Backpacking' didn't reach English dictionaries till 1916. Trekking up to twenty miles a day, six friends walk from Le Havre to St Malo, staying at village inns and doing their very best to speak French. Two years before the First World War, they're walking right through the D-Day country of 1944. Pretty villages they knew would be wiped off the map. The ruined abbey where they sheltered from a storm became the scene of an infamous war crime. The Chateau de Creully became Field Marshall Montgomery's headquarters. WWII haunts the 1912 idyll.
In the dimly-lit junkshop, one line cried out from the faded page.
'Poppies made the fields of corn and barley very gay.'
Young Edwardians would know the old language of flowers. Poppies meant compassion and relief from pain. Soon, the poppies of Flanders and Northern France would symbolize the grief of a world mourning for its sons. Did those four young men return to France? Die there, on the Western Front?
In Flanders fields, the poppies blow
Between the poppies, row on row
That mark our graves.Knowing how close the backpackers are to the war that tore Europe apart, the last words of their story are unbearably poignant.
'And once again raise the glass, refill it to the brim, and with clinkings and deep draughts each pledge each, to better friendship, long life, and happy, happy days.'
This is the story of Fred, Ross, Frank, Alec, Gladys and Emma.
Images on this web-site are copyright to the descendants of the Nomads and to the descendants of Arthur Leonard. All rights reserved.
Site last updated 12/04/10