Remembrance comes around every year and inevitably it generates different reactions.
For any serving or retired member of the Armed Services, the reaction is as you would expect. There is a natural kinship and camaraderie between those who have served their country, whatever their age or circumstance. There is a shared understanding of what service life involves, its rewards and dangers, its costs and implications. Servicemen and women may call to mind different things during the annual 2 minutes silence, but many will think of friends and comrades who they knew who have died in conflict. For me, I shall always remember Paul “Tiger” Wright, a university friend killed in Dhofar, Oman in 1972 while serving with the SAS, and Mark Coe, murdered by the IRA in 1982 on the doorstep of his Married Quarter in Germany. Both their names are on the main Memorial at the National Arboretum in Lichfield, along with over 16,000 (yes, 16,000) other British servicemen and women who have been killed in the many conflicts worldwide since 1945. On the few occasions that I have been able to visit the Arboretum, I have spent some time in front of each of their names, remembering them as I had known them, their qualities, their faults, their quirks, their aspirations, the futures that had been denied them.
But for those of us without service connections or background, especially the younger generations, Remembrance may be a little more difficult. And that is partly why, for the last 10 years or so, Alix Hickman, Derek Brockway and myself have given up our time to host a Year Group from Kings Worthy Primary School at St Mary’s. We have established a tried and tested format in the form of an illustrated talk about what Kings Worthy was like during the World Wars, followed by a short service with RBL Standard and bugler and laying of a wreath at the Memorial, and finishing with a short tour of the Church showing how we remember the fallen, and some of the stories of those involved.
The Remembrance Service at St Mary’s on Sunday will also follow the usual format and will conclude with the traditional Act of Remembrance in the form of the sounding of the Last Post and the Reveille and a reading of the names of those who did not return from the 1st and 2nd World Wars. There will also be the 2 minutes silence. I do hope that you will consider joining us for this commemoration, and if you don’t know quite what to do or think during the Silence, perhaps reflect on one or other of those who fell in those wars. It might be Lt Bryce Stewart in whose memory the St Mary’s Memorial on the green overlooking St Mary’s Close was originally erected; Bryce was killed in Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq) in 1916, aged 22, after having been wounded in action at Ypres in 1915, or the four Baring brothers, sons of Rev Francis, who was the Rector of St Mary’s during the 1890s.
As an alternative you could give a thought to the 20 killed in the course of the 2nd World War and commemorated by regimental plaques on the panelling round the choir. No less than 6 of these were killed within a few days of each other during the withdrawal to and from Dunkirk in 1940. Can you imagine the impact that those 6 telegrams must have had on the small and close-knit community that was Kings Worthy in the 1940s?
The two world wars took a terrible toll, and you would have thought that our leaders would understand, but a survey of our world today suggests that we have not learned much. Groups of people who differ in their ethnicity or culture or religion seem intent on imposing their will by force on those who disagree with them, and there seems to be no limit to the cruelty and savagery that they are prepared to inflict on each other. What makes it worse is that politicians with terrifying weapons of war at their disposal, but with little understanding of what war involves, seem desperate to meddle in remote conflicts against the advice of their military experts. We can rage against what is being done in our name but it seems that our views count for nothing. There is a sense of increasing disenfranchisement.
But we should remember that conflict at any level has its origins in personal relationships. What we do as groups reflects the attitudes we take at an individual level. Yet the prevailing popular ideology seems to be that we can have anything we want; we should “fight for our rights”; our beliefs must take priority over everyone else’s. If that is our creed and mantra and the way we behave, then it is no wonder that we are always disagreeing with others.
Conflict will only cease when those in dispute seek to reconcile their differences, when we listen to the other person, when we compromise, when we recognise that the opposite point of view is just as valid as our own. That is the Christian message. We should not be crusaders insisting that we are right, but people who genuinely love and respect all those with whom we come in contact. That means always looking for the common ground and never letting a disagreement fester.
Remembrance is a good time to look at our own relationships – within the family, with our friends, our work colleagues, our neighbours – to be tolerant and try to heal the disagreements. If we cannot do it between ourselves, then there is little hope for the tribes, nations and religions of which we are part.
John Sweeting, Ministry Team