Willi Siebert was born in 1893 in Kassel Germany. He trained as an apprentice pharmacist but his supervisor died in the third year of his training so he went into the paint and varnish trade. When the First World War started in 1914, rather than wait to be called up, he volunteered and by August he was on the front line as an infantryman. In November 1914 he was recalled to Berlin because someone had read in his files that he had chemistry training. He joined a new regiment being formed to use poison gas on the battlefield. On April 22nd 1915 Willi Siebert was one of the men that opened the 5780 chlorine gas canisters on the battlefields of Ypres, Belgium. This was the first large-scale use of chemical weapons. On what he saw afterwards he later said:

‘What we saw was total death. Nothing was alive. All of the animals had come out of their holes to die. Dead rabbits, moles, and rats and mice were everywhere. The smell of the gas was still in the air. It hung on the few bushes which were left.

When we got to the French lines the trenches were empty but in a half mile the bodies of French soldiers were everywhere. It was unbelievable. Then we saw there were some English. You could see where men had clawed at their faces, and throats, trying to get breath. Some had shot themselves… Everything, even the insects were dead.’

Willi Siebert survived the war, married, had children and went to America to begin a new life. His story came to light when his son came home from school one day and told him what he had learnt that day: it was something to do with war and how glorious it was. Willi Siebert began to tell his story to show that war is not glorious.

I’m an academic and for nearly 15 years I have been researching issues concerning the elimination of chemical and biological weapons. Over those years I have seen some pretty nasty photos, watched some horrible films and read some frightening words about what these weapons can do. It is part of my job to know and understand how toxic chemicals and diseases can be used to kill and injure so that I can then join together with others and use my brain to help (at least I hope I help) to make these weapons a thing of the past. So believe me when I say I am good at compartmentalising.

I thought what I did was purposeful. I was part of a community of dedicated people around the world working to make sure that chemicals couldn’t be used as weapons, that disease couldn’t be used as weapons. Mine was/is a minuscule part, but what drove me was the idea that when I combined my small efforts with the efforts of others, we became a bulwark against the misuse of science.

And then my circumstances changed. The man who had been my boss retired. An absolute giant in the field, he co-founded a research group about 30 years ago and when he retired I took over his role as co-director. Instead of this meaning I got to do more of the work that I found meaningful, I instead found my time being increasingly taken up with tasks which were, for me, empty.

At first I didn’t think it was affecting me, but over this last 3 years or so rarely would a day go by when I didn’t mutter/say/shout/scream (depended on the day really) “I just want to be left alone to do my work!” I thought seriously about quitting, moving out of academia altogether, after all this wasn’t what I had become an academic to do, so why stay? I’d see job advertisements for tax free salaried positions, in my area, in international organisations and sometimes I would come home and tell my husband about them.

“Is it what you want to do?” he’d say.

“Not quite” I’d say “but it would be better than what I am doing now. And I’d be paid three or four times as much as I am now.”

He’d say nothing.

It was late afternoon on the day before Good Friday and I had been dumped with a load of admin all needing to be done ASAP. I was on my computer, half paying attention to my husband telling me that he had two evening events that he really needed to go to on April 21st and April 23rd. I wasn’t paying attention because I was reading an open invite to a conference taking place in Ypres for the 100th anniversary of the first large scale gas attacks. I looked up from the screen and said: “I need to go away for a few days, it’s really important.” I don’t know whether it was the look on my face, the tone of my voice, or what, but without hesitating he said: “Go. I’ll sort out things at home.” And so on April 22nd I found myself in Ypres, 100 years to the day since the first large sale use of chemical weapons on the battlefields.

I had a few hours to kill before the 2pm start of my conference and I decided to wander around the In Flanders Field Museum. At precisely 1pm (I remember because I saw the time and thought “Oh shit I’m going to be late…again”) I was in front of one of the interactive displays and an actor spoke Willi Siebert’s words, the ones italicised above.

I stood transfixed. My stomach knotted.

Over the next 2 days that feeling didn’t go away. I listened to powerful talks from a German Ambassador who spoke from his heart about how humbled he felt to be invited to this place, on this date, to take part in the commemoration ceremonies of what his country had done to others; by a French Ambassador and the Minister of Defence for Algeria, and whilst I admit they stretched my French to the limits, I understood enough to know that they too were honoured to be asked to take part in these commemorations and were urging us to act to make sure these horrors could never take place again. I stood in front of three memorials to gas victims that day and listened to the Last Post being trumpeted (or is it bugled?). At the Menin Gate I found the name of my Great Grandad who died in the trenches on May 5th 1915 (I wonder, had he heard about poison gas? Had he been gassed?) and as bagpipes played the large stone where his name is etched was lit by the evening sun.

The following day I listened to testimonies from survivors of more recent gas attacks: a young man who was 3 months old on March 16th 1988 when his town, Halabja, was bombed with chemical weapons by Saddam Hussein’s forces; a man who was an 18 year old volunteer fighter in the Iranian forces during the Iran-Iraq war when, on 13th February 1986 at 8am, he too survived a chemical attack. Both of them wanted their stories to be heard so that these weapons might never be used again.

And then I heard something, which after all of this, broke through those well-erected walls of mine. A survivor of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 sent a video message to the meeting. The face of this old Japanese man filled the screen in front of us and after everything that I had heard and seen, it his words that made me cry:

“I knew something big had happened when I saw a very bright light… 20 damaged people came to my house and my mother treated them… not all of them could live… one of them passed away in my house. I couldn’t do anything because I was too young. I was only five years old.”

I have a son. He is six. And with those words that old man on the screen transformed into a child.

My reaction (I was not alone by the way) is exactly why he tells his story. He and a small group of other child-survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, now aged between 73 and 86, are travelling on the Peace Boat that will stop at various ports around the world. There, they tell their stories and they will return to Japan in time for the 70th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bombs on their towns.

Conscious that this is an event now consigned to history, and that they, the child-survivors, are now old men and women, some way of closing the distance created by time so as to reach people who are my age needed to be found. The way decided was the “I was her age”/ “I was his age” project.

After the video message one of the people involved in organising this voyage told us that sometimes when at sea and out of communication they can feel a little lonely. What makes them happy is to look at videos of people waving at them and wishing them ‘bon voyage’.

I’m a wife, a mum, a daughter, a sister, a friend and colleague. I try to do my best in all of these roles; sometimes I get it right, often I don’t. Even when I do my best and get it right I accept that my life is small. I can’t change the world; I can’t bring about world peace; I can’t solve the economic crisis; I can’t give jobs to everyone that wants one; I can’t put food on the plates of everyone that is hungry; and I certainly don’t have the power to make countries get rid of their nuclear weapons. But… I can wave and I can say ‘bon voyage’ with enthusiasm and in that simple act I can perhaps bring a smile to a group of people who use their stories as testament to why nuclear weapons must never be used again.

So I have set myself a challenge: I want to see if I can make a film to send to the organisers that has 50 people waving and wishing these old men and women (to me, now young boys and girls) ‘bon voyage’. It is that simple — a wave and an enthusiastic ‘bon voyage’. No other words, no other actions. Will you be one of these 50?

If you want to be then send your clip to me at [email protected] And whether you do or don’t, please go to their Facebook page and like it.