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Letter: A better way to honour Wilfred Owen’s generation?
Wednesday 29th September 2010, 6:03AM BST.
Shropshire war poet Wilfred Owen
Letter: With regard to the suggestion for a statue of Wilfred Owen in Oswestry, the place of his birth, I think that a bronze frieze or relief paneled plaque running the length of the wall of the Cambrian station building or on the low side wall of the platform at Coney Green, sited on the side of the platform which lies directly adjacent to Oswestry Town Green, would be appropriate.
It could depict World War One soldiers with their kit bags about to embark from Oswestry Station for the front and include, perhaps, a centre piece bas relief of a head and shoulders likeness of Wilfred Owen in his officer’s cap and uniform. It would be more evocative than a large statue.
Relief friezes such as those used in Rome and around the Parthenon in Greece can depict active scenes and can evoke the imagination better sometimes than a ponderous statue.
They have been used by great memorial builders such as Trajan in Rome. Trajan’s arch shows Roman soldiers and is a historical record of the soldier’s dress and uniform of the day.
Perhaps an open arch, gateway entrance, much like the arch in Rome, with bas relief panels depicting soldiers leaving for the trenches with an arch keystone relief of Wilfred Owen could be sited at the north of Oswestry’s new Town Green.
Such a gateway or a wall frieze would be a different way to remember Wilfred Owen and it would remind us of all the soldiers of families in Oswestry and throughout Britain and beyond who packed “all their troubles in their old kit bag”, as a song of that time encouraged, and went off to war, some never to return.
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I think the best way to remember them would be an online memorial. There are several around and it is always interesting to know who these men were who gave their lives, and maybe see their photos.
By the way, did you know the trees round what uesd to be the Boys’ High School playing field are in memory of the Old Boys who died in WWII?
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