Berwick cockles

In this centenary year of the outbreak of that most terrible of conflicts, you cannot escape The Great War - drama, documentary, analysis, opinion, reconstruction, review, poetry, diaries, letters, recorded recollections.
WWI is no longer reality as it was to many older people when I was young.  It is history now.  An eighteen year old today is as far from the Somme as an eighteen year old then was from Waterloo.
The war memorial in the village is still dutifully tended, indeed beautifully tended. The names on it are still those of many of the local families.  In that respect, we are no different from hundreds of villages throughout the land.
The village does have one quirky unique feature.  The commander of the British forces, Douglas (later, Earl) Haig spent his boyhood holidays in our village. During the war, his niece stayed at The Mount, a large house overlooking the bay and a local woman recalled to her that she had dried her uncle’s wee feet and putting on his “sockies” for him when he was a child paddling in the sea.
 “He was a good wee boy”, she remembered.

The Mount

The beach still has its Edwardian style bathing huts

His niece sent some Berwick Cockles, locally produced sweets with a minty flavour, to him in France.  He was fond of these and received so many that, soon the Cowe family in Bridge Street, Berwick upon Tweed who made them, were labelling their tins of Berwick Cockles  “as supplied to F.M. Haig”
In his letter of thanks to his niece, he reminisced -
 “Well do I remember when I used to exchange me (sic) pennies at the Post Office  for Berwick Cockles"

The Old Post Office on the right

http://www.scotsatwar.org.uk/AZ/HaigFellows%27Addresses02.html

It is recorded that Field Marshal Haig suffered from toothache whilst in Flanders and sent for a Parisian dentist.  His sweet tooth had its price.

Children still paddle in the sea at the beach in the summer but none will ever know horrors such as those that that engulfed that little boy.