IT WAS the last poignant letter written home by war poet Wilfred Owen. And listening to his disembodied words coming from a small speaker in the confines of the very place they were penned 93 years ago is a haunting experience. It was while crammed into this brick-lined cellar with about 30 men that Owen, trying to make light of his situation, wrote: “Dear mother, I will call this place from which I am now writing the smoky cellar of the Forester’s House. I write on the first sheet of the writing pad which came in the parcel yesterday… “So thick is the smoke in this cellar that I can hardly see by a candle 12 inches away and so thick are the inmates that I can hardly write for pokes and nudges and jolts.” “On my left a company commander snores on a bench. Other officers repose on wire beds behind me.” Writing on Thursday October 31, 1918, he goes on to describe the laughing men around him as they peel potatoes and feed the fire with damp wood – a band of brothers with few cares. “It is a great life. I am more oblivious than alas! yourself, dear mother, of the ghastly glimmering of the guns outside and the hollow crashing of the shells. “There is no danger down here, or if any, it will be well over before you read these lines… “Of this I am certain: you could not be visited by a band of friends half so fine as surround me here. Ever Wilfred x” As the church bells tolled announcing the Armistice, Owen’s parents Susan and Tom received the telegram announcing their son’s death on the Oise-Sambre canal at the village of Ors in the Nord Pas de Calais region of France. It was just a mile away from the Forester’s House. Emerging from the dim cellar there is now a curved wall engraved with words from that letter. And the house itself has been transformed into a shrine to Owen. A contemporary work of art, it is part sculpture and part sound and visual installation. The red-brick exterior has been rendered and bleached as white as a bone, while the roof resembles a book left lying face down, with its pages constructed of glass to let light into the two-story interior. Inside, the building has been gutted and the walls covered by a translucent skin of glass etched with excerpts from Owen’s poems including his most famous, Dulce et Decorum Est. Written in the hand of the poet, complete with scratchings out and corrections, the poems have been replicated from his original manuscripts, housed in the British Library. As the lights dim, animated lines of poetry are projected on to the walls and the voice of Kenneth Branagh reads 12 of Owen’s poems in an hourlong loop. They are interspersed with French translations by Xavier Hanotte of eight of Owen’s poems, read by the actor Philipe Capelle. The creation at the Maison Forestiere is the work of Turner nominee artist Simon Patterson and commissioned by the Ors mayor Jacky Duminy, who secured funding from Art Connexion. “The house had been abandoned so it was very open what I could do,” says Simon. “We thought about connecting the forest with the canal, but the people of Ors definitely did not want a museum or monument. “When I came here and saw the abandoned house the first idea I had was of the roof like an opening book, as a way of letting light in. The interior was full of nasty Sixties furniture. “I didn’t want to do a twee historical recreation of what the house looked like in 1918 and I was thinking of a bleached bone when I chose the colour of the outside. What we have on the inside is a membrane, going back the idea of the body.” Shielded from the road is a small amphitheatre, where poetry readings and other events can be held. It is ironic that Owen, whose verse came to encapsulate the futility and waste of war, should have died in an abortive bid to cross a seemingly insignificant canal. Leading a unit of the Manchester Regiment, just weeks before his death the 25-year-old was involved in savage hand-to-hand combat. His bravery won him a posthumous Military Cross. According to the citation, he personally manipulated a gun from Germans and from an isolated position inflicted “considerable losses on the enemy”. More than 200 men surrendered, bringing 24 machine guns. Owen wrote home: “I can find no words to qualify my experience” and “I lost all my earthly faculties and fought like an angel”. On November 4, just days after writing his last letter, Owen was tasked with crossing the Sambre-Oise canal at Ors, where the Germans had dug themselves in on the eastern bank. Walking down the towpath today, lined with a pen containing hundreds of pheasants, it is difficult to envisage the horror of that day. It was at a slight bend in the canal that engineers dropped in floating pontoons. They were met by “terrific” machine gun fire and mortars, while a direct hit demolished the makeshift bridge. The attack faltered. Though there were no eye-witness to Owen’s death, some remember him patting them on the back saying: “Well done. You are doing well my boy”. Owen is buried in a corner of the local cemetery, where he rests alongside others who fell the same day. The permanent gravestone bears his final rank – was promoted to lieutenant the day after his death – and a misquotation from his sonnet The End, supplied by his mother. Shall Life Renew These Bodies? Of a truth all death will he annul. In the poem, the second sentence is also a question mark. Perhaps his mother would have been consoled by the certainty. 􀁧 GAVIN travelled travelled by East Coast train (eastcoast.co.uk) to London King’s Cross to join the Eurostar service at neighbouring St Pancras to go on to Lille. Combined standard class return tickets from North-East stations, covering East Coast and Eurostar travel start from £98: more details and bookings also available via eurostar.com or by phone on 08432-186-186. He was a guest at the three-star Le Mouton Blanc, in Cambrai mouton-blanc.com. Anyone with an interest in the First World War is recommended to visit remembrancetrails-northernfrance.com for information about The Remembrance Trails project. Other places of interest included the Matisse Museum at Le Cateau-Cambresis, birthplace of the artist. Also recommended is a meal at the town’s Hotel Restaurant des Digues hoteldesdigues.eu