“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, we will all 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 the war memorial in Boroughbridge this Sunday, 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. I’m reminded of what is on our war memorial: "In memory of the Boroughbridge Men, who gave their lives for their Country in the Great War 1914 - 1918. This monument is erected by their fellow-townsmen and friends.
"The Lord hath done great things by them." Ecclesiasticus 44.2
We find it almost impossible now to imagine what the two world wars were like. Imagine receiving a 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… there was not the instant showing of carnage we see on the news at 1 every day…
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? Do we get what todays military are prepared to go through? Looking back, The Times of 28 August 1916 described the Somme – an absolute bloodbath and a testimony to the folly of humanity 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 whose 70th anniversary we mark this year – my uncle Bob served in Korea, and they say he went with black hair and returned grey – In total about 81,000 British and over 50,000 Commonwealth service personnel served during the Korean War, with British casualties being more than 1100 killed in action and more than 2500 wounded. Nearly 37,000 Americans lost their lives.
It is estimated that over half a million North Korean and Chinese troops were killed and at least half a million South Korean personnel were killed or injured. The civilian cost of the war was extremely high, estimates are that a total of two million North and South Korean civilians were killed.
William Swarbrick of 20 Field Regiment, Royal Artillery arrived in Korea in February 1953. He recalls:
“When I came home after being away for 12 months there was no home coming party. When I met friends and they said that they hadn’t seen me for a while, I told them I had been to Korea.
They usually asked where it was in the world. I don’t think many people knew about the Korean War and it came to be known as the ‘Forgotten War’.”
Then there’s the Falklands in my lifetime and Iraq and the Eastern European areas like Croatia in the 1990s and the mess of Afghanistan and all of these places remind us to give thanks for and remember today’s young people serving in our armed forces across the world today. And to thank those serving in our armed forces especially those close to me writing this in North Yorkshire at Dishforth and at Catterick. We are all too well aware that in November 2023 on this remembrance weekend we live in a world at war.
The situation in Israel and Gaza escalates each day, with horrific numbers of innocents killed as bombs fly over the region, and like in any way, soldiers are called up to defend what is perceived as right, and then there’s the Ukraine. That is still as bad as ever, but it seems to have slipped out of our attention. Then there’s the many other areas of conflict happening this very minute that aren’t even deemed newsworthy. We cry, in the words of the prophet Nehemiah, that they cry peace, peace, when there is no peace. Or we understand the little girls mistake in her history book: “ Armistice was signed on 11 November 1918, and since then there have been two minutes of peace every year.”
Hear this again: “greater love has no one than this that they lay down their life for their friends.”
On 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 is the motto of the Royal British 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.
I spent some time this week while on holiday browsing on Barter Books in Alnwick, one of the best second hand bookshops in the country. I found some memoirs of the former President of the United States, Jimmy Carter. I remember when Ronald Reagan started to bomb Libya we thought he was mad – that was years before Donald Trump! President Carter is now well into his 90’s and he’s written his memoirs: he writes:
“War may be a necessary evil, but no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to love together in peace by killing each other's children.”
If you are like me you look at the world and wonder what you can do. It’s easier to turn the tv news off. But I leave you with these two thoughts: the words of Edmund Burke first:
“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.”
I was struck in the week by the words of the late BBC broadcaster George Alagiah read at his memorial service in London last Tuesday:
"If you haven't already told the people you love that you love them, tell them. If you haven't already told them how vulnerable you sometimes feel, tell them.
"If you want to tell them that you would like to be with them until the front hall stairs feel like Everest, tell them. You never know what is coming around the corner. And if, lucky you, there is nothing around the corner, then at least you got your defence in first."
Surely that’s a better way, isn’t it? There are some animations of Dad’s Army on the Gold TV channel at the moment.
In this week’s Private Godfrey who was always not comfortable in the Home Guard really says, “War doesn’t suit me I’m afraid.”
But today we confess it is sometimes necessary when parts of the world go mad.
Like those who fell, God calls us today to responsible and sacrificial living.
Greater love has no one than this.
