Remembrance Reflections

As another Remembrance Day approaches I reflect on the simple joys in life; a walk along a country lane, raking leaves in the garden under a crisp blue sky. Pleasures that were denied or curtailed for so many of those that we honour and remember.

I think back to my childhood and the war memorial that occupies pride of place in the heart of the town, the names of the fallen etched in stone. War memorials have always represented a sacred place in my life, and it saddens me that this respect is not universally shared. War memorials and CWGC cemeteries have a profound effect on me, especially those in the midst of small rural communities and in corners of foreign fields.

Whenever I travel I seek out the CWGC cemeteries. My first visit was on the shore of the Aegean Sea at Gallipoli where Australian graves basked in the evening sun. I marvelled then at the courage and commitment of those who left all they loved behind to travel thousands of miles to take up arms. The debt I felt then has never left me. Decades later I would acquire the medals to a Berkshire man who was wounded but survived the assault on Scimitar Hill in Gallipoli. “If such a place as Hell exists it was on that hill….the worst is that nearly all my pals are gone.”

I’m privileged to be the custodian of medals to men from my communities. John Lewendon who lived within a mile of my home, married for just six weeks before his death in the trenches in 1916. William Warman, one of 11 men from the small village of Checkendon, who rests in Karasouli in Greece.

Others who lie in Hong Kong and Tunisia, and those with no grave but the sea and who are commemorated on the imposing Naval Memorial on Southsea Common.

Public imagination is captured by the industrial scale slaughter of the First World War. But remembrance for me is not just for the fallen but for those who served. The PoWs who endured inhumane treatment in the camps and metal mines until they dropped. The ARP warden who dug out survivors from a collapsed basement during the German blitz on Portsmouth as bombs continued to rain down.

An Argyll veteran haunted by his experience in Aden; a Falklands veteran who fought fire to save his ship from sinking; a Northern Ireland veteran who sold his medal for a bed and a hot meal.

But I return to my local men in whose footsteps I walk and for whom there would be no return. They are remembered in churches and communities and I count myself privileged to be able to honour their memories. Their names liveth for evermore.