We will remember...

Took my first Remembrance Day service and Act of Remembrance around the war memorial today. It went as well as these things do. Producing a suitable sermon was a bit of a challenge. I know little about war although I suppose that I have lived through several, Vietnam being the first one I remember hearing and seeing anything about. That and the Cold War. Guess that I was about 9 or 10 years old when I lifted the telephone handset in the fire station and listened to the signal (a regular beep) that meant that we were not under attack and did not have to do all the things that the booklet on ‘What to do in the event of a nuclear attack’ said that we should do. Something like ‘Take to the space under the floor (a sort of metre high basement), tape over the air bricks with black polythene and make sure that you have a radio, water and food’ I seem to remember. Not that it would have done much good.

So what can I say that is of any possible relevance to those sitting there wearing their medals and memories? I don’t have any medals, not even my father’s – he sent his back in disgust… The Panorama programme shown this week on the BBC was a bit of a reality check though – the experiences of a camera crew and reporter in Afghanistan with a unit of the Guards. Rivetting viewing but I hope that is as close as I ever get to battle…

Anthem for Doomed Youth

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
– Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle
Can putter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, –
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
Wilfred Owen