Silent Majority

"At the going down of the sun, and in the morning
We Will Remember Them"

This is Remembrancetide, in the UK- and most of the Commonwealth. It's easy to overlook that unique family of nations' part in two World Wars, as we observe this annual pause for reflection. We are asked to remember all those who have given their lives for freedom and liberty in war and conflict, both now and in the century past.

How muted those words "freedom" and "liberty" can sometimes seem these days, like the muffled bells of mourning. Yet we remind ourselves again this weekend, it was for these causes that many millions gave their lives, and we should never forget them. In a world of constant rush and chatter, the best way we can respect the precious lives cut short in too many theatres of battle, is to fall silent ourselves, even if only for 120 seconds- about as many heartbeats as each of these fit young lives once knew before the true horror of war silenced them.

For those who have never lived through a whole world at war, the post-1945 generations to which I belong, remembrance could seem an irrelevance. Some,taking a different view,even say that the red paper poppies of remembrance which adorn so many British jackets and jumpers each November are a symbol too far, glorifying rather than villifying the sad facts of war.

Yet for the majority of Britons, the poppy is worn with pride. Not the red component of a national flag being jingoistically celebrated by a nation obsessed with past glories, but a reminder of the preciousness of life itself, and the grief we should all feel that war has so often, particularly in the last hundred years, prematurely ended lives with potential- lives that might even have contributed voices of sanity and wisdom which would help to end all wars,like the "Great War" was supposed to do.

Like Lawrence Binyon's famous poem I've quoted above, poppies are for the fallen. Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. Politicians can argue the rights and wrongs of many causes but often their career in democracies is brief and easily forgotten. Like the former British defence secretary described by legendary TV interviewer Robin Day as "here today, gone tomorrow". Not so the servicemen who have to defend our nations. Ordinary people- fathers, brothers, uncles, sons and nowadays female relatives too- robbed of their loved ones, are those who can never forget those they have lost.

Don't we owe it to them -always- to remember, with gratitude, yet sadness, their sacrifice? Earlier this evening, I watched with my younger brother the perpetually moving and poignant Royal British Legion Festival of Remembrance. There is more information on this event, and Britain's biggest service charity, if you follow the link in the title of this post. The ceremony, which has been held for eighty years now, has at its finale thousands of poppies falling from the roof of London's Royal Albert Hall. It is a solemn time which needs no words- silence speaks volumes.

Tomorrow, at the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the nation will respectfully and collectively observe two minutes of silence, commemorating the exact moment at which the guns finally fell silent in 1918 in the armistice of the "Great" war which robbed so many of the breath of life. It is a scene which will be repeated at countless war memorials in villages and towns not just in the UK, but across the commonwealth, and most particularly in those places where the fallen lie. I intend to remember my Great Uncle Clifford, a private in the Royal West Kent regiment, who I never knew, at our local service.

Yet the bible reading at the Festival of Remembrance by His Royal Highness the Duke of York, Prince Andrew, himself a veteran of the British Navy task force in the Falklands Conflict of 25 years ago, perhaps portrays even more eloquently, in the words of Jesus Christ, the "Prince of Peace", the price that love sometimes has to pay. "Greater Love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends".
Actions speak louder than words. Jesus' actions, his whole life and death- and what followed- did that more than any ceremony at a simple cenotaph or a grand hall. May his supreme example, of triumph over evil, bring about the end to war for which we all yearn. When the majority will no longer need to be silent, for peace will prevail throughout all the earth.