The Campbell Academy Blog | Colin Campbell (73)

A silent minute

We did the minute's silence twice at the weekend, both times at the boy's football, standing around the centre circle with their arms around each other's shoulders, staring downwards at the ground. All of us thinking about something different.

Did you do it?

If you did, what did you think about?

I'm always drawn back to Leonard Heath, my wife's great-grandfather.

The picture I have in my office is of him standing with his uniform on somewhere in France in the First World War and the certificate beside him, where he was mentioned in Dispatches for bravery unidentified, signed by Field Marshal Haig and Winston Churchill.

What did Leonard have to do there to get that certificate?

What horrors did he have to endure and see and face and deal with for the rest of his life?

Leonard Heath returned from the war, by all accounts, a broken man, never quite the same after the things you might have seen.

He flew reconnaissance planes over trenches in the First World War.

Imagine that planes, basically made of wire and toilet paper, over gunner positions.

I think about how difficult life was for him and his family then and how easy and soft it is now.

I think about the things that people didn't complain about then and what we complain about now.

I understand that my boys are moving and twitching during a minute's silence because it's become almost impossible for them to rest in their own thoughts for a single minute now because of the way the world has changed.

It's a special thing, the minute's silence, for all sorts of reasons, but entirely personal and individual.

I'll do it every single year.