Man Reading a Letter on Paddington Station

The war memorial at Paddington Station commemorating the 2,254 employees of the Great Western Railway who died in WWI.

The sculptor was Capt. Charles Sargeant Jagger, MC. (MC stands for Military Cross, the second highest decoration for bravery in the British military). I don't know a lot about Jagger, and would like to find out more - for example how he won his MC. As I find out more, I will post it here.

What is clear is that the man was a genius. This is very much a soldiers' war memorial: It shows soldiers as they generally are: over-burdened with clothing and equipment, subject to the vagaries of the weather and above all, deeply concerned about what is going on at home, and how their loved ones are coping.

There is nothing to suggest gung-ho patriotism here, and in this way it stands in stark contrast to many other memorials. The first world war, rather like the one we are fighting now, seems to have lacked any great ideological basis - we are not fighting for civilisation in the face of National Socialism, for example. When we make our war memorial for our current war, surely it must take its measure from this one, focusing on the very human sacrifices that were made, rather than the rather less than noble cause in which they were made...

I am intrigued by the possible contents of that letter. Is it his wife telling him that his children are doing well at school? Is it his mother passing on news from home?

In my experience, the best letters to receive are the ones that tell you that the garden is looking good, that the cat has put on a lot of weight, and that the pot-hole outside the front gate has been filled in by the council. In short, the ones that say 'life is how it should be, nothing of any particular interest has happened here, and all is well'.

Believe me, please, when I tell you that for all my altruistic desire to help humankind, my Parents' Cat's weight problem is, at the end of a long day, of far greater importance to me than the welfare of the people of Basra, or the possibility that we might be soon come under rocket fire again.

If you're in London, stop and look out for him, on Platform One, reading that letter. Londoners barge passed each other beneath him, knowing, for the most part, nothing of any kind of sacrifice, little of genuine suffering.