In the summer of 1968, I was thirteen and my family went on holiday to Jersey.

We stayed with my grandparents in St Helier.

All the adults warned me not to ask Grandad about the Great War. 

They said that he wouldn't tell me anything, and would probably go into one of his ‘moods’.

The first time we were alone together, I asked him.

After a long pause, (and a hard stare), he started to tell me about his time in the trenches.

For about an hour I listened to Granddad’s memories of The Somme.

The steady tick of the grandfather clock measured frequent pauses as he stopped to gather his thoughts.

He told me that some explosions reduced men to a fine red mist, which was carried high in the updraft.

Some of his mates said poppies would grow where the mist settled.

 

Over forty years later, I painted ‘Poppies’.

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