Remembrance Sunday 2021

Passage for reflection: John 15: 5 - 13 

“Greater love has no one than this,” says Jesus, “that they lay down their life for their friends.” On Remembrance Sunday, across this country, people will gather to remember the sacrifice of so many young men and women who for our tomorrow gave their today. At 11am, in silence, today, and last Thursday, we pause to remember and give thanks, and we think about the world they fought to create, and we think about our world and pray for its future. 

My family come from a village in Hertfordshire called Wheathampstead. Part of that village is called The Folly. It was a community where everyone knew each other and many were related to each other. The little chapel I grew up in had memorial windows at the back of it to honour its fallen. I have a picture at home of some young men really excited sitting on a cart which belonged to the local rag and bone man. The picture is called “the Folly boys go to war” - they were off on a patriotic adventure, escaping from drab existences. One of them was my grandfather, Harry Smith. Harry fought in the Battle of the Somme. He survived it, but only just. A bullet went through his chest and out the other side. Some of the others on the cart did not return. 

I’m very aware as we stand by war memorials we will hear names read out. Those people are now part of history. But we honour them and name them so that they and countless others are not forgotten. They like my grandad and his mates on that cart, were ordinary souls. They had no idea many of them would not come back, that they would give their lives for their friends. 

Brian Bilston is a poet who writes poems on Twitter mostly. He writes very powerfully and this year my thinking about what to say about Remembrance have been helped by his poem called “Three Postcards”:

The first one came from Weston-super-Mare

with the newly-built Grand Pier in view,

a bright, gleaming promise of the future,                

and the sea, an impossible blue.

Unfamiliar, that neat hand, the black fountain pen.

But she knew he was the one, even then.

The next, she received eighteen months on:

Tidworth station, as viewed from Church Hill.

The foreground, a row of thatched cottages;

the barracks beyond; fields, silent and still.

She propped it against a vase on their mantelpiece,

a wedding present from her niece.

The last, a busy scene from Boulogne,

a censor-passed, heaven-sent souvenir.

‘Crossing rough – but I made it!’ he’d written.

When it’s all over, we should come here!’

She clutched it tight as the baby moved once more.

The telegram had come two days before.

We find it almost impossible now to imagine what the two world wars were like. Imagine receiving that telegram as a young woman. You waved your beloved off on the cart, or on the train. There was no texting or FaceTime. You waited for letters or worse… 

Can we comprehend what the trenches of World War One were like or the fighting in the air, on the sea, across country in both world wars? I recommend you watch the deeply moving Peter Jackson film “They Shall Grow Not Old” - it’s on BBC2 on Sunday night. There’s real film of real situations there.  Or I recommend the film 1917 which was shot in real time. It’s not an easy watch but again it helps us understand the sacrifice and the carnage. The Times of 28 August 1916 described the Somme like this:

“The earth shook, the ground and all that was on it turned to dust. Chaos reigned. No one who has ever experienced war could ever forget the horror, the early death, the waste, the pain, the suffering.” 

Can we grasp the horror in those who served and survived that war to end all wars when they saw it happening again just 21 years later? I’ve had church members in the past tell me how they saw their parents shudder with fear as they gathered round a radio to hear Neville Chamberlain speak on that September day in 1939. 

Can we really know what those who returned from war suffered and still do? For Remembrance includes the likes of Korea and the Falklands and Iraq and Afghanistan and it reminds us to give thanks and remember today’s young people serving in our armed forces across the world today. This year is the centenary of the founding of the Royal British Legion. It was on Sunday 15 May 1921 that a small group of ex-Servicemen and representatives from the four organisations, The National Association of Discharged Sailors and Soldiers, The British National Federation of Discharged and Demobilized Sailors and Soldiers, The Comrades of The Great War and The Officers' Association walked to the Cenotaph in London. As Big Ben struck nine, the four men representing the organisations laid a wreath with the badges of the four organisations that would officially unite to form the British Legion.

We must not underestimate the achievement. Those four founding organisations did not entirely see eye to eye, with differing purposes and political affiliations, but the sheer scale of the suffering of ex-service personnel and their families meant internal disagreements were overcome to produce a concerted and united effort to care for those who had suffered as a result of service in the Armed Forces during The Great War, whether through their own service or through that of a family member, and to care without distinction of rank or position. Indeed when the constitution of the newly formed British Legion was agreed it was proposed by a junior soldier and seconded by a General. There were to be no divisions in this outpouring of compassion and assistance – no distinction of rank or status.

Over the last 100 years the Royal British Legion has passed on to successive generations the ideal expressed in the motto of ‘Service before self’ – calling all of us, in whatever forms we can, to service and compassion: to return to our text: greater love has no one than this that they lay down their life for their friends.” 

On this Remembrance Sunday, what does that text mean for us? I think as we remember that sacrifice so many made for our freedom and our future to be in peace, we use the silence to think about our own lives. Are we selfish or are we sacrificial? We follow one who gave his life freely to save us from ourselves, to show us that love conquers hate. A poppy appeal one year said “the best way to honour the dead is to care for the living.” So we stand and remember, and then we resolve to work for a better world, putting “service before self”,  that motto of the Legion.

Those men and women who went to war or who serve in today’s armed forces, like the men on the cart pre joining the Hertfordshire Regiment in 1914, went out because they believed in creating the greater good, a world of peace and understanding, where the tyrant and the evil one could not win. Today we honour them, and for us remembering must lead to resolution. If you are like me you look at the world and wonder what you can do. But I leave you with these two thoughts: the words of Edmund Burke we think:

 “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” 

And then: “Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.” 

Like those who fell, God calls us today to responsible and sacrificial living. 

Greater love has no one than this.