Remembrance Day

 Remembrance Day

The long lists of names are most evident in the smallest of places. In every village, the war memorials and rolls of honour are prominent, catching the eye when it becomes dulled by the quotidian or distracted by change, and never more so than now when the red splashes of poppies call out from grey pavements and dull weather.                     

Every year as a teacher, I attended the Remembrance Day Service in the school chapel, followed by a silent procession to the cenotaph in The Garth - a beautiful C12th quad - and the Act of Remembrance for the whole school. It was carried out with a military precision, which belied the often chaotic slaughter it commemorated, so that all was in place for the Last Post, two minutes of reflection and a trumpeted Reveille to chime with the bells from the parish church at 11.00am. In truth, military ceremony has never greatly appealed to me but it was hard not to be moved by the proper sense of monumental sacrifice articulated in words of lasting gravity and silences of even greater weight.

Many in the school chapel brought their own stories as ex-servicemen and women, or relatives of such, some wearing a parent's or grandparent's medals, or present to pay their respects for their only visit to a church that year. There was no element of choice for the pupils or staff but, on this day, that seemed particularly appropriate.

Professionally, like many of my colleagues, I felt a strong obligation to ensure the pupils gained a full understanding of the history, the literature and the contexts and consequences which brought us all, every year, to the Act of Remembrance but personally, my emotions were tied - and still are - to grateful memories of my beloved grandfather, a Lance Bombardier in the 8th Army and a WWII veteran, invalided home in 1943 to a deservedly quiet and happy life.

Evacuated from Dunkirk, when friends were killed or captured and spent the war imprisoned; rescued from a torpedoed troopship in the Bay of Biscay, when comrades were drowned; fighting in North Africa and manning an artillery gun at El Alamein when so many died, and finally, surviving with shrapnel embedded in his leg when his Sergeant and his officer, standing on either side of him, were blown into nothingness by a shell in Sicily, he returned to his family when so many did not.

I think too, of my equally adored grandmother, nursing when the conflict started and then bringing up a child, my mother, on her own, in wartime, with every day poised on a fulcrum of fear and not knowing. If ever I needed an example of unflinching courage and determined duty, it was in their humble, hard-working and heroic lives. I do not think I will go to a service this year but I will always remember them, and their kind, and I will give thanks.