“I have many times asked myself whether there can be more potent advocates of peace upon earth through the years to come than this mass multitude of silent witnesses to the desolation of war.”
These are the words of King George V as he looked out on Tyne Cot, the biggest Commonwealth war graves cemetery in the world. They are also the motivation behind Fields of Battle, Lands of Peace 14-18, a moving public exhibition as well as a 100 year memorial of The First World War launched officially by HRH The Duke of Kent in St James’s Park on August 4 2014.
Creator Michael St-Maur Sheil said: “I first went to a battlefield with my father. He was a veteran and I was fascinated by his remembrance of the ground, the curves in the ground. This is something that I have discovered that all soldiers know about, the lie of the land.
“These are fields where battles took place, I’m not seeking to show the misery and the horror of the battlefield, I’m just trying to show that nature has indeed come along and healed it”
To explain further, the exhibition’s website turns to P. J. Campbell’s words in remembrance of his comrades: “I saw that bare country before me, the miles and miles of torn earth, the dead trees. But the country would come back to life and trees where now there were only splintered skeleton stumps. They would lie still and at peace below the singing larks, beside the serene rivers, they could not feel lonely for they have each other.”
The work is expected to draw crowds in London after receiving critical and popular acclaim in Paris where it has been since April.