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‘Let paintings of that scene be hung upon the wall
In rooms where governments decide if men should stand or fall…’ We climbed up the bank then we stopped and turned round and I looked across No Man’s Land. There weren’t a shot being fired, but it was lit up like daylight because they kept firing 'Very' lights in the sky. You could see all blokes laying dead all over the place, it were lit up as clear as that. If only an artist, a well-known artist could have stood there with us and painted that scene as it was then there and took it back and hung it in the Cabinet headquarters of other countries, they’d never dare declare another war if they sat and looked at that… My old darling she always used to read the good book. What I can recall mainly was the little bit she used to read: ‘As I pass through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil.’ I always used to say then, ‘I did pass through the valley of the shadow of death and I felt no evil.’ Those people that I killed - deliberately killed – I didn’t hate those chaps, I didn’t know ‘em! I didn’t hate ‘em, and as I’ve said before, I’m not only sorry – I’m ashamed I done it, because those young chaps might have been nice young chaps with a family, have a couple of little kids and all that. You know, it’s awful… (Hawtin Mundy, above, being interviewed in 1980, LAMK) Paul Clark said of his song Valley of the Shadow: ‘I’d read Hawtin Mundy’s description again and again of his experience at the battle of Arras. I knew that the song had to be slow and somewhat stark because of what it was describing… It is a special song for me - his feelings about looking over the battlefield; and the biblical images... I was able to bring those images together in a very simple tune, and it all came together very quickly. The first little piece of the tune actually comes from one evening sitting in a Shakespeare production in London, and the brass in the orchestra there played that tune whenever the scene changed, so the notes stuck and the rest seemed to come from it.’ Valley of the Shadow has become an anthem for the Living Archive Band and is the most frequently performed of their repertoire. Images and interview material from the LAMK archive The song features on the Living Archive Band’s album All That’s Changed Vol 1 (LAMK) |
Hawtin Mundy
The battleground at Arras, 1917 (LAMK)
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