Private Walter Donald Benger

Today I was leafing through the “to do” pile on my desk and came across a piece of paper on which my mother had written:

Pte Walter Donald Benger
Killed in action Aug 26 1918 (19 years)
British Military Cemetery
Vis-en-Artois
(France P.P.C.L.T.)

Walter was my mother’s uncle. I had told her I would look him up on the internet, but then the slip of paper got buried. So today I googled his name and the name of the cemetery, and found the Canadian Great War Project website. It has details on over 75,000 soldiers who fought in WWI. According to their records, Walter was 5 feet 5” tall, had a 37” chest and a 3” expansion, enlisted on May 31, 1917, and was killed in the Battle of Monchy on August 26, 1918. He’s buried in Plot #IV.I.2 in Vis-En-Artois British Cemetery, in Haucourt, France. The site also links to soldiers’ diaries that have been digitally transcribed. Unfortunately, Walter left no last words. I wonder, did he ever go to a Parisian nightclub and oogle can-can girls? Or enjoy red wine and love down by the Seine, or in red fields where the odd groan of pleasure was easily concealed amidst groans of pain? Or regret his decision to enlist?

My mother, who normally is quite Gandhian in her views on the use of violence to settle conflicts, tells me she regrets not having been born earlier so that she could have joined the Allied effort. Perhaps this isn’t that difficult to fathom. I once saw a wartime photo of a woman in France who was living on the street. All she has is a small bag of clothes and her dog. I wonder if she survived the war. I wonder if at some point she had to kill her companion in order to survive. One of Anne Frank’s friends tells about the last time she saw Anne, naked, crying, covered with lice bites. If god survived Nietzsche, he/she/it must certainly have been exterminated in one of the concentration camps.

In Japan, cherry blossoms symbolize the beauty and brevity of life. The kamikaze flew their Cherry Blossom gliders into US ships; the alternative was disembowelment in a cement bunker. Like cherry blossoms, poppies have an extravagant, ethereal beauty. I never buy a poppy, but I plant lots of them. Let’s not forget they also bloom in soils unpopulated by the dead.