In a drawer in my parents’ bedroom in Hexham, there’s a square-shaped card box about the size of your hand. The box folds outwards like a flower, with four triangles disappearing to reveal a Union Jack cloth inside. Within the cloth sits a bronze medallion dominated by the image of Britannia and a lion. And above the lion’s head there’s a name:

James Welch.

Memories

Childhood memories are strange things. I’ve often wondered why some random moments have stuck with me while others haven’t.

A few weeks ago my dad sent a photo of me and my sister stood outside our old house near Manchester when we were kids. It must have been raining that day because we were wearing plastic-looking raincoats.

As soon as I saw the image I could remember how that jacket felt on my skin. The way it smelt as the rain fell.

It’s odd that senses can take you to half-forgotten places in the past.

If I’m out walking in the autumn and I smell burning leaves, I’m sometimes transported to a misty field somewhere in Cheshire. To a school trip I went on as a kid. In the distance through the fog are reconstructed Viking or Saxon settlements – I forget which – with volunteers in fancy dress teaching the kids how to turn wheat into flour.

In this memory of mine, kids in plastic-looking jackets are pointing wooden swords at each other while others examine and smell old objects.

“This is what history smells like.”

I know that smell already, I’m telling the other kids. I’ve smelt it before. It’s the same smell as the box that folds outwards like a flower. The box with the Union Jack cloth wrapped around the medallion that was made to honour my great-great uncle.

The medallion

Blurred stories are told of distant relatives like James. I remember hearing them occasionally when I was a kid. But the longer ago it was that somebody died, the fainter the stories get. In the end they become soft whispers that are blown around like leaves in the wind and are lost. Replaced by other more pressing sounds.

James’s medallion has been in that drawer for my entire life. First in one home, and then in another. It has sat there silently inside the little Union Jack cloth as conversations floated in the air around it.

Occasionally I’d take the medallion out to look at it. I took it into class at my middle school when we were studying the First World War.

I took it to University for a while, too. I’m not really sure why. Perhaps because I was studying history I wanted to have some physical reminder of the past with me. A piece of history that meant something to me.  

Years later my dad retired and he got into building a family tree. As his tree grew, one of the branches reached out and found a familiar name. A name that made my dad open the drawer in his bedroom, looking for the box that smells of history. The box that folds outwards like a flower.

Charleroi

It’s a Wednesday morning at the end of March, and me and my dad have just arrived at the Cimetière de Charleroi-Nord.

We’ve found James’s grave and, as we stand there studying the details of the headstone, a bunch of leaves circle above us in the breeze. They fly up and over the beautiful old tree that will have cast its shade over this spot for a century or more. At least for as long as James has been here.

As we stand there in front of James’s grave, it seems silly but I can tell my dad’s thinking the same thing:

Sorry it’s taken us so long.

We’re pretty sure that we’re the first family members to visit – one hundred years and one month after James died of pneumonia in a hospital on the French-Belgian border.

He was 27 years old.

Details of where James was during the war and what he did are still a bit murky. My dad has found out about as much as he can without us seeking the advice of some kind of expert on the period.

What we do know is that James fought for the entire duration of the war. We think he was in Egypt, Gallipoli, then Egypt again before being sent to the Western Front near the French town of Maubeuge.

What we didn’t know before and discover while we’re at the cemetery is that most of the men buried there were prisoners of war when the fighting stopped in November 1918.

Salford

On the train to Charleroi from Brussels-Nord, my dad and I are talking about James. My dad hands me a little golden locket that belonged to his grandmother. The locket has two photos inside. One is of her husband – my great-grandfather. The other photo is of her brother, James.

My dad tells me that his grandmother came to live with him and his parents when he was a boy. She’d show my dad the locket I’m now holding. Apparently she’d get upset when she spoke about James, so my dad didn’t want to ask her too much about him.

James is in Charleroi now, she’d say. But she didn’t know where.  

I take the locket and stare at the photo of James in his military uniform.

Sometimes history can feel intimidating. The distance in time can seem too great. It’s a bit like looking up at the stars in the night sky – it can feel too vast. Too difficult to comprehend.

But photos can make it easier for us. It might only be one single moment in time, but a photo captures something in the subject. A particular expression or even a mood.   

When I look at James’s face in the locket, I feel like I could easily see him on my commute in London, adjusting his headphones. He wouldn’t look out of place waiting alongside me at the bar in Hackney on a Friday night.   

My dad tells me that James had a girlfriend back home in Salford. I wonder what happened to her. Did she meet someone else after the war? I think about the hours that she’ll have spent looking at the same image of James that I’m looking at now.

In late 1918 people were celebrating the armistice that signalled the end of a long war. Weary, half-broken men began arriving home.

But James didn’t come home.

His parents, girlfriend and sister – the owner of the golden locket – had a few more months of longing and anguish before the letter arrived that they’ll have prayed never would.

1919 – 2019

The sun breaks through the early-spring clouds in Charleroi. It’s the first time we’ve really seen its light since we arrived in Belgium 24 hours earlier.

And as I stand there in front of his headstone, I think about what James would make of this scene. What would he think of these two distant relatives of his at the end of their private pilgrimage?  

I wonder what he’d think of so many different things. I wonder what he’d make of our fingers dancing upon little cases of metal and glass.

What would he think of me writing this story?

I take another look at James’s headstone. It displays the insignia of his regiment – The Lancashire Fusiliers. The men around him are from regiments from all over the UK, Ireland and the world. James lies next to an Australian soldier called P.O Abramovich. Opposite him is an Indian gunner named Sadu.

As I walk and read the headstones of the other men around James, I find it hard not to invent my own story about them. I imagine these men talking to one another in the hospital. I imagine them telling stories of their lives back home. Sharing photos of the girlfriends and wives they’ll never see again.

I feel a kind of desperation to know more. To be able to paint an accurate picture of what happened to James and these other men. But I know a lot of it will always remain out of reach.

As we leave the cemetery and head down Rue Bethléem towards Charleroi Sud train station, I think about the story I’ve just created in my mind. And it turns out that my dad’s story is the same as mine.

These men from all over the world had fought bravely for years and were dying months after the war ended rather than returning home to their loved ones. But they weren’t alone in the hospital. At least they had each other.   

I know that the next time I’m back home in Hexham, I’ll go to the drawer in my parent’s bedroom and take out the square-shaped box the size of your hand that smells like history. The box that folds outwards like a flower. I’ll unwrap the Union Jack cloth and I’ll hold the medallion with its image of Britannia and the lion. And I’ll think of James.