A Memory: A Selection for Remembrance Day

As usual, a selection from the small booklet I compile for our 11 am silence in the office.

The Poppy

The poppy has a long association with Remembrance Day. But how did the distinctive red flower become such a potent symbol of our remembrance of the sacrifices made in past wars?

Scarlet corn poppies (popaver rhoeas) grow naturally in conditions of disturbed earth throughout Western Europe.

In late 1914, the fields of Northern France and Flanders were ripped open as World War One raged through Europe's heart. Once the conflict was over the poppy was one of the only plants to grow on the otherwise barren battlefields.

The poppy came to represent the immeasurable sacrifice made by his comrades and quickly became a lasting memorial to those who died in World War One and later conflicts.

It was adopted by The Royal British Legion as the symbol for their Poppy Appeal, in aid of those serving in the British Armed Forces, after its formation in 1921.

France 1914

Reporting from France for the Saturday Evening Post in 1914, journalist Cora Harris concluded:

What men suffer through war is written in histories but what women suffer is never written. When one writes of the women’s side of the war one cannot tell of battles won, or of the glories that crown the heads of victorious men. It must be a story of sorrows; of despair; of poverty; of privations patiently endured.

Afghanistan, 2007

Royal Marine John Thornton was just 22 when he was killed by a deadly improvised explosive device in Afghanistan. The brutally indiscriminate bombs are the stuff of nightmares for soldiers the world over.

Here is an extract from the diaries Lieutenant Thornton kept before his death.

Deployment Day, September 20, 2007

Spirits are high. Anticipation of the coming six months is clear to see on the faces of the young. Before the adrenalin builds we must all go through our goodbyes with families and friends. My friends are very understanding. Grandparents waved goodbye a week or so before. My brother is second to last. Then the last of the goodbyes, face to face with my mum and dad. Always makes me upset with guilt.I watched my mum cry and my dad comfort her as I got into my car and drove to Taunton whilst fighting back my tears.

My ‘death letters’ are full of feeling and emotion so – as I write to my parents and brothers imagining that I was dead – I have to allow my tears to shed. This is the only time I expect to cry.

Armistice 1918

On the morning of November 11th I was called into the Colonel’s room “to take some notes from the telephone.” They were all there and got up and made room for me at the table. I think they must have thought that I knew shorthand which I didn’t. A voice, very clear, thank God, said “Ready?” and began to dictate the Terms of the Armistice. They muttered a bit crowding round me and I said fiercely “Oh shut up I can’t hear!” and the skies didn’t fall.

I wrote in my own private short-long-hand and half my mind was in a prayer that I should be able to read it back. I could hear my heart thumping and hear the silence in the room around me. When the voice stopped I said mechanically “understood” and got up.

I made four copies of what I had written and took them in and went back to my little office staff and told them. I can’t remember much what we said: I can only remember being so cold, and crying, and trying not to let the others see.

That night it was all over Paris. There were sounds of cheering and rejoicing down the Boulevards as I walked home. What I thought of was “Recessional.” The Pension produced some champagne at dinner and we drank the loyal toast. And then across the table G. lifted her glass to me and said “Absent”. I did not know her story nor she mine, but I drank to my friends who were dead and to my friends who, wounded, imprisoned, battered, shaken, exhausted, were alive in a new, and a terrible world.

- May Wedderburn Cannan, Paris 1918

A Memory

There was no sound at all, no crying in the village,
Nothing you would count as sound, that is, after the shells;
Only behind a wall the low sobbing of women,
The creaking of a door, a lost dog-nothing else.
Silence which might be felt, no pity in the silence,
Horrible, soft like blood, down all the blood-stained ways;
In the middle of the street two corpses lie unburied,
And a bayoneted woman stares in the market-place.
Humble and ruined folk-for these no pride of conquest,
Their only prayer: "O Lord, give us our daily bread!"
Not by the battle fires, the shrapnel are we haunted;
Who shall deliver us from the memory of these dead?

- Margaret Sackville

Remembrance: A Meditation

3000 BC at the Dolmen

The tribe can rest now, and our stone temple is complete. Into the side chambers, the tribal priests will place the grave goods - amulets, bracelets, and some of the bones of the ancestors. The fires will burn brightly down the passage, and we will chant the sacred songs, and the past will be very close tonight. 

The air is thin between this world and the next, and we build this to remember the past, our ancestors who will always be with us, and as long as stone will endure, may not be forgotten. Most are buried in earthen graves, but these bones are a token, a sign for the tribe, and it is enough. 

At the turning of the sun, at the matching of the night and day, and especially at the cross quarter day when the nights are growing long, we shall see the patterns in the stars, and know that it is time. We shall gather with the shades all who have gone before, and all their hopes shall be our hopes, and we shall pray for a good harvest and a mild winter. The fires will burn bright, and we shall remember them.

11th November 1918, In the Trenches

Today, we are told, sees an end to the mud, all the cold and wet, the noise of the guns, and the shells pounding down. Too late for some of my friends. And we are all wounded now, one way or another, with scars in our memories, which will remain with us until the day we die.

Now all we can do is to hope for a better world. We have been promised a land fit for heroes. It seems like only yesterday, but another world, a bright and sunny day, in which we marched up and down the parade ground. The band played a rousing marching song, and we felt sure we would find victory; we were full of thoughts of valour and brave deeds. 

Little did we know the despair and misery that would be our lot; the lice, the trench foot, the iron rations, and the endless mud and rain. This was, until today, our lot, for those of us lucky enough to survive, and those not driven mad by the endless noise of guns.

And when we are old, we will look back and remember those Islanders who died here, in a foreign field, friends and comrades in arms, taken in their youth, never to grow old, as we who are left grow old.

But our hopes are now for a brave new world, fresh shoots of spring, and families to build in a time of peace. Will there be that world so promised by the politicians? Or will we be forgotten, as some have said, only remembered on ceremonial occasions once a year, standing at cenotaphs across the land, but forgotten for the rest of the time?

Will we grow old, struggling to make ends meet, fretting over food and warmth, while those we fought for, and their descendants, stand and make fine speeches, and enjoy acclaim and wealth? Will we decline into an old age in which we again face hardship, frugal rations, and the biting cold of wintertime? Who will really remember us?

1944, The Normandy Beaches

We landed on Normandy to the sound of machine gun fire, and shells from the German positions. The carnage was dreadful, and I saw many of my mates fall down beneath as they struggled up the beaches. But now, the day is over, and we have won a victory, and taken a beachhead, and we move inland tomorrow. The great attack is over, and victory is in our sights. A time to take stock, and reflect of future hopes, if any of us come out of this alive.

One thing is certain, we will not be cheated like our grandfathers and fathers were, with glib promises of a land fit for heroes. Where there is the chance, we will take it, and we will vote for change. It is time for change. People are dying here, and they are dying so that all those of use lucky enough to survive will have hope. Well, you can't have that if all those who didn't fight are in charge, in the same old way.

The mood is that we can do this; we will look forward not to just let the politicians do it, but to elect our own people. The English soldiers are already talking of Attlee and Labour. Churchill may have won the war, but when war is past, we want people looking forward, to changes, to free health for all, housing, a decent pension, social security, and a fairer society.

We want a world built from the ranks of the ordinary soldier, the common man. If we are to remember our fallen comrades, we shall pay tribute to them in this way, by changing the world. I don't know if there is another world, like the padre says, but I know we don't want pie in the sky, but fair shares for all in this world. How much we build a better world, I do not know, but this will be our memorial to the dead; our monument to their lives. In this time of hope, we shall look back and not forget that ordinary folk paid with their life's blood for our future. Yes, we shall build a better world. And we shall remember them.

1972, Northern Ireland

I would not have thought our Islanders could be caught up in this conflict, but they have. I am here as a representative of the funeral directors to convey, with dignity and respect, the remains of a poor lad shot and killed here last month. To the rest of the world, the conflict here must seem a very private little war, but it still has the power to destroy lives.

I remember my grandfather taking part in the Great War, the war to end all wars. Only it was not, because then there was the Second World War, in which my father fought. Warfare has become less global, but smaller private wars continue, many still die, and so often those fighting have lost sight of all reason why the war began; hatreds become inbred, and even those who are brought in to keep the peace get caught up in the madness.

Now there will be a new name on the Cenotaph; a new date, and a new war, in which we remember the dead.

600 AD, A Remote Bay in the Island

We landed today in our small boats. This is an empty bay, with rocks at either side, and no signs of habitation; here we can settle and begin our small community. The Lord gave us a strong wind, and blew us onto the beaches, bringing us safely through the storm, in his great mercy. Under the shadow of his wings, we came safely into harbour. Blessed be his name.

Once we have settled, we will seek out those who live here, and trade with them, for we have many skilled artisans, skilled in working with metal and wood. We have scribes who can read and write, and who can bring the Lord's word of peace and joy to the people who live in this land. 

For in our travels, across the channel dividing our lands from these southern regions, we have come across much sorrow, tribal laws which are not just, where the widow and the orphan and the stranger are forgotten. We shall teach these peoples to know the justice of the Lord, and his mercy on us all. For we are all strangers in a strange land.

There is wood here, and we can fashion a shelter for worship, in which we can pray for the peoples of this Island. We shall gather the names of their ancestors, and the names of the living, and all their songs and stories, and we shall take care that nothing is lost that the Lord has entrusted to us. We shall light our candles, break bread, and we shall remember them.

Armistice Day

There has been in recent times, a modern revival of the custom of taking a minute's silence on Armistice Day, not on Remembrance Sunday, but on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.

In our office, a room is set aside for 11 am. A candle is lit, decorated with a few poppies around its base. For those who wish, they come through at around 10.55 am, and wait for the one minute's silence. I always prepare a small folded A6 piece with selections for contemplation, as well, and below are a selection from this year.

Remembrance
The narrow bridge of mourning
spans generations.

Overnight every dream shows
destruction. Ashes and bones.

Remembrance wells up.
Not only at the cemetery

but when planting, or
listening to the radio.

The moment of silence
lasts forever.

- Rabbi Rachel Barenblat

After the War
After the war perhaps I'll sit again
Out on the terrace where I sat with you,
And see the changeless sky and hills beat blue
And live an afternoon of summer through.

I shall remember then, and sad at heart
For the lost day of happiness we knew,
Wish only that some other man were you
And spoke my name as once you used to do.

May Wedderburn Cannan, In War Time

Prayer

Lady, whose shrine stands on the promontory,
Pray for all those who are in ships, those
Whose business has to do with fish, and
Those concerned with every lawful traffic
And those who conduct them.

Repeat a prayer also on behalf of
Women who have seen their sons or husbands
Setting forth, and not returning:
Figlia del tuo figlio,
Queen of Heaven.

Also pray for those who were in ships, and
Ended their voyage on the sand, in the sea's lips
Or in the dark throat which will not reject them
Or wherever cannot reach them the sound of the sea bell's
Perpetual angelus.

- T.S. Eliot, The Four Quartets

Ave
In cities and in hamlets we were born,
And little towns behind the van of time;
A closing era mocked our guiless dawn
With jingles of a military rhyme.
But in that song we heard no warning chime,
Nor visualised in hours benign and sweet
The threatening woe that our adventurous feet
Would starkly meet.

Thus we began, amid the echoes blown
Across our childhood from an earlier war,
Too dim, toos oon forgotten, to dethrone
Those dreams of happiness we thought secure;
While, imminent and fierce outside the door,
Watching a generation grown to flower,
The fare that held our youth within its power
Waited its hour.

- Vera Brittain

Prayer for Remembrance Day
For those who were killed in battle,
For those who gave up their lives to save others
For those who fought because they were forced to,
For those who died standing up for a just cause
For those who said war was wrong,
For those who tried to make the peace
For those who prayed when others had no time to pray
For those creatures who needlessly die
For those trees that needlessly are slaughtered
For all of mankind
let us quietly pray:

May your God hold them in peace
May Love flow over the Earth and cleanse us all
This day and for always.

Marianne Griffin 11am 11 November 2004

Remembrance

I remember John Perry when I was doing biology O-Level at Victoria College, now a lifetime ago. College at that time was awash with ex-military types who had turned their hand to teaching, some good, others more like those described in “Goodbye Mr Chips” as “old crocks”. I found John Perry to be one of the better ones.

He came to the College in 1963 as a biology teacher. In an appreciation given by Brian Vibert when he left the school in 1989, he was described as "exacting but fair, versatile in his approach, ready to change his techniques and attitude to teaching when he felt it necessary, even if he did not personally wish to. He loved the subject he taught and expected others to enthuse too."

I still can picture him – tall, and with a somewhat florid face. But outside of lessons, I didn’t really get to see him. I never joined the school CCF, as I have an aversion to military square bashing, and anything like that. For one thing, like Corporal Jones in “Dad’s Army”, I cannot keep time, even when clapping to music, I am always a beat out.

But the name rang bells, and memories, when I came across this piece from “The Pilot” in 1994, I remembered the name. This piece is all about memory, and it is full of memories. Memories connect us, and here John Perry uses his own memories, and those of his ancestors, to connect to those remembered from conflicts then and today.

There is a piece in “Goodbye Mr Chips”, where Chips reads the name of the former German teacher at the school out at school assembly – he has died in the trenches. I couldn’t help but recall that when I read about John Perry’s old college of St Catherine’s College, where the panel of 54 names of those who died in the Great War also remembers Leonard Hubert Jagenberg, of the Royal German Navy Flying Corps, because he was an “old boy”. He was killed in a training accident on 7th October 1914.

And that is the other part of remembrance- reconciliation. Seeing the ties which transcend national boundaries, in this case, membership of a Cambridge college, but deeper than that, our common humanity binds us all.

At Theberton Parish Church in Suffolk, a large board commemorates 16 German Airmen who were buried in the churchyard after a Zeppelin was shot down in 1917. The graves were tended and remembered as much as those of the village men who had also died. The board also says “Who art thou that judgest another man’s servant? To his own master, he standeth or falleth” (Romans 14:4)

I am very pleased that a wreath will also be laid this Sunday at the memorial by the Churchyard entrance of St Brelade’s Church for the Germans who died here during the Occupation, and who were buried in the cemetery by that entrance. And also that the minutes silence now takes place on the 11th as well, something which was not the case when John Perry penned this article.

Remembrance
By John Perry
This oft-quoted word derives from memories. Many of us can remember items from the past, either locations or people or both from many years ago or the events of the last few months. It may well be that the "olde worlde" thatched cottage on the corner or a particular bend in a long-forgotten country lane suddenly transports you to times past; pleasant or not so.

For myself, brought up on a large manorial estate near Cambridge, there stands a bridge over a series of lakes. Some three generations ago the .Lord of the Manor had an inscription placed on each side of that bridge.

Margaret and I stood on that span earlier in the year and as I looked down the largest of the lakes, memories of the thirties flooded back. That gentleman crossed the bridge, travelled to Australia and died there (mid-thirties).

Nearer home, on Battle of Britain Air Display Day, the mere sound and vibration of the Merlin. engines of the Lancaster and Spitfire recalled those days in the forties when airfields such as Bourn, Gransden, Graveley, Duxford and Bassingbourn daily disgorged aeroplanes overhead manned: by young men, many still in their 'teens, who fought in the skies and died that we might live in freedom. They died over Britain, over Europe, over Jersey;, over Asia as many others died before and after them not only in the air but on the ground, on and under the sea.

These men and women from all walks of life we bring together on the nearest Sunday to 11th November each year: Remembrance Sunday, when we lay wreaths of .Flanders poppies and stand still with our own memories of wars large and small - from the 1914-18 War where my father fought at Mons, Ypres and on the. Somme, to 1939-45 when my small village lost its young men as the “Cambridgeshires” spent their war years in captivity in Changi PoW Camp on the Burma-Siam Railway.

Since then Korea, Kenya, Northern Ireland, the. Gulf, Bosnia, Aden, Suez and Trucial-Oman -all have added names to the lists on War Memorials all over the world. Names not just of British, nationals: but also of Allied and Commonwealth Servicemen and women.

In Remembrance : there is a:poignancy - of :lives begun- and then cut off in their primes

"They shall not grow old
as we grow old."

In many places young men are remembered from the ranks of the opposing army. In my old college in Cambridge, the Great War memorial records one "Jagenberg" under the heading, 'In Hostis Amicus." He is remembered: as an old member of the college, not as an enemy.

These names engraved in stone or wood serve to remind us not only of those who made the ultimate sacrifice as indeed did Our Lord some 2000 years ago, but also of those still 'living – some fit and well, others crippled in mind or body who must for their lifetime be looked after by us.

I no longer lay the Victoria College wreath on our own Cenotaph here in Jersey but watch the Whitehall service on television. In 1993 Margaret and I attended the service at the Hong Kong Cenotaph with an unfortunate chattering background of uninterested bystanders. We noted the "Chindit" wreath later and that was Margaret's memory of her father who was a Padre in "Ferguson's Column" in Burma in 1943-44.

A few days previously we were sitting in our Boeing 767 of Qantas Airlines at Sydney airport awaiting take-off. The ding-dong of the public address system alerted us. It was the captain. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "it is now just before 11 o'clock on 11th November. If you would care to be silent with your own thoughts of Remembrance at this time I will quieten the engines. Thank you." The aircraft, with not an empty seat, was suddenly very quiet and remained so for a few minutes. To our shame we did not connect our take-off time 11 o'clock with the Anniversary of the Armistice in 1918.

Before the outbreak of the Second World War a silence was kept on "Armistice Day," 11th November, when most people throughout the then British Empire stopped what they were doing for those moments,

We found it incredible that at least one person still thought along those lines. It has often been said that the big parades and services of "Remembrance Days" glorify wars and conflicts. I for one having during Army service taken part in some of those parades and services strongly disagree.

"At the going down of the sun and in the morning we will remember them."

Let us never forget - least of all. when the Last Post sounds on Sunday 13th.

Remember Me

As we approach Remembrance Sunday, a short piece about remembering, and those lost, whose bodies were never found again, and how they were once someone's child, growing up, and all the promise cut short.

Remember Me
 
Remember bones of forgotten soldiers lie
In no man's land. They fall, they die,
But no one knows then or even today,
Where they were killed, where they lay;
Life snuffed out like a candle's flame,
And in an instant gone. And no name
For the unknown soldier. But one day,
He had been a young baby, and a ray
Of sunshine, a blessing to his parents,
Who would scarce believe clothes rent
By bullets, lying there, still, all alone,
Left to become shapeless rags and bone;
The schoolboy, playing pranks, happy fun,
And little knowing of a blood red setting sun;
Remember me, remember those with no name,
Those left, whom no one returned to claim;
Into the dark, the valley of the shadow of death,
They all went, each one lost, each last dying breath,
Taken on the winds of the world, blown away,
And all we can do is light a candle now and pray.

All the Chief Minister's Men

Here are my guesses as to Ian Gorst's line up - to be announced today, along with a friend who has also given me his opinions. We'll see who is closest!

Home Affairs - Bailhache (we both agree)

Treasury - Ian la Marquand or John Le Fondre (we both agree)

Economic Development - Lyndon Farnham or Patrick Ryan

He suggests that I should not discount Len Norman who is current Assistant Minister - though he  may now be wary of the 'Jackson Factor'

Social Security - Francis le Gresley (we both agree)

Housing - Paul Routier

He suggests that Andrew Green may want to retain this and Jackie Hilton may have a go for this one too.

Health - Sarah Ferguson or Anne Pryke (we agree)

Education - James Reed

He has a feeling this could be contested by John Le Fondre who may have a go at this if he fails Treasury either as Minister or Assistant Minister

Planning - Rob Duhamel or John Young?

He notes that Rob Duhamel has said he would like to retain - but he could well choose John Young as Assistant Minister but it is unlikely that another newbie will be offered the main role - not after Freddie Cohen.

TTS - No ideas at all. Philip Rondel is the only name I can think off, largely because of his concern with main drains! But he also has recycling experience.

He has a sneaky suspicion that Patrick Ryan may have a pop at this if he doesn't make Economic Development, Philip Rondel may be nominated but with the Michael Jackson experience in mind turn it down. That said, it's about time Alan Breckon stepped up to something.

PPC - Chairman - Alan Breckon or Roy le Hérissier

He hopes Roy gets it. He has however  been there before. He made a good job of it but Juliette Gallichan may well want to hang on to it. I do note that Juliette Gallichan did say in September that she wanted to step down.

So we'll see later today. In the meantime, if you have any guesses, post a comment here. I'll be commenting on the actual choices made tomorrow.

Remembrance 2011

A selection from the small booklet that I prepare for our office. We go into the boardroom, where there is a poppy on a cross, a lighted candle, and a few pieces to read and reflect upon.

---

Remembrance, 2011
 
For The Fallen
 
They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.
 
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
 
Laurence Binyon, 1914
 

---

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.  This world in arms is not spending money alone.  It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.  This is not a way of life at all in any true sense.  Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.  (Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953)

---

Trenches changed army life. Instead of relying on the daring hand-to-hand combat that had won previous wars, soldiers of World War I lobbed explosives at each other from deep dirt holes. Through curtains of shell-fire, soldiers witnessed unimaginable destruction; the blood of hundreds of thousands of their comrades soaked the fields that separated them from their enemy; heavy artillery ripped huge holes in the earth and could bury men alive. Sitting in their damp, stinking, dirt trenches, soldiers lurked, fearful of peering over the top. And as the war dragged on, the supplies to the front and the numbers of replacements dwindled, leaving tired, hungry soldiers to hold the front.
 
Excerpt from "Good-bye to All That"
Robert Graves, British army captain
[May 28th 1915]:
 
Last night a lot of German stuff was flying about, including shrapnel. I heard one shell whish-whishing towards me and dropped flat. It burst just over the trench where 'Petticoat Lane' runs into 'Lowndes Square.' My ears sang as though there were gnats in them, and a bright scarlet light shone over everything. My shoulder got twisted in falling and I thought I had been hit, but I hadn't been. The vibration made my chest sing, too, in a curious way, and I lost my sense of equilibrium. I was ashamed when the sergeant-major came along the trench and found me on all fours, still unable to stand up straight.
 
Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918), Canadian Army:
 
In Flanders fields the poppies grow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place, and in the sky,
The larks, still bravely singing, fly,
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

Excerpt from The Storm of Steel: An Officer on the Western Front
Ernst Jünger
 
"Regniéville" [July 1917]

Rations were very poor. Beyond the thin midday soup, there was nothing but the third of a loaf, and something infinitesimal to eat with it, usually half-mouldy jam. Most of mine was always eaten by a fat rat, for which I often lay in wait, but in vain. This sparse living, which left us always half-fed, brought about a most unpleasant state of affairs. The men often suffered literally from hunger, and this led to pilfering of rations. . . . When it comes to food, the good manners that in Europe are mostly whitewash are soon scratched off. . . . Privations and danger tear away all that has been acquired, and then good form survives only in those in whom it is born.

 "The Great Offensive" [1918]

Everybody had that clutching feeling: 'It's coming over!' There was a terrific stupefying crash - the shell had burst in the midst of us.- I picked myself up half-conscious. The machine-gun ammunition in the large shell-hole, set alight by the explosion, was burning an intense pink glow. It illumined the rising fumes of the shell-burst in which there writhed a heap of black bodies and the shadowy forms of the survivors, who were rushing from the scene in all directions. At the same time rose a multitudinous tumult of pain and cries for help. I will make no secret of it that after a moment's blank horror I took to my heels like the rest and ran aimlessly into the night. It was not till I had fallen head over heels into a small shell-hole that I understood what had happened. Only to hear and see no more! Only to get away, far away, and creep into a hole!

Genocide in Armenia
 
An Excerpt from Lines of Fire:
Women Writers of World War I, edited by Margaret R. Higonnet, 1999.
 
In January 1915 Turkish troops attacked Russian-held Kars in Armenia. The attack failed after only a few months, and the disappointed Turks began to suspect that Armenians living within Turkish borders had aided the Russians. Shortly after the failed offensive, the Turkish government began to deport and massacre Armenians living within the Turkish Empire.
 
As part of the deportation, in 1915 Gadarinée Dadourian and her five children were forced from their home in Gurun in eastern Anatolia. (Her husband was in America at the time.) In the following excerpt Dadourian recalls the genocide:
 
The deportation of Armenians from Gurun happened under the same conditions as everywhere else. The road we took to Der el Zor presented to view an enormous hecatomb. Luckily, my husband was already in America. I went into exile with my five children, three of whom died along the way, the two others at Der el Zor. . . .
 
Once a week, groups of three to four thousand Armenians, under pretext of transporting them elsewhere, were taken away and exterminated. The river Murad was choked with corpses; an escort of military labourers was called to the spot to free the blocked waters of the river. The children of these martyrs were assembled in an orphanage; there were at least 6,000.
 
Town criers warned that any Arab who sheltered Armenians in his house would be hung. They were authorized to keep only women, without children, as servants. I was in the last caravan to leave the city; we knew they were leading us to our deaths. After two hours' march, we were halted at the foot of a hill. The Turks led the women in groups higher up. We did not know what was going on there. My turn came too; holding my two children by hand, I climbed the calvary [hill]. Horror! There was a well wide open where the executioners immediately threw the women they were stabbing. I received a sword blow on my head, another on my neck; my eyes were veiled at the moment I was thrown into the well with my children. I was on a pile of cadavers wet with blood. My head wound bled and my face was bloody.
 
I scarcely had the strength to drag myself toward a cavity in the well, where I lost consciousness. When I regained my senses I was in an Arab house. After the departure of the Turks, Arab women had come to search among the corpses in hope of finding some survivors. That is how they found me and seeing I was alive, they saved me. From then on I lived in this family as a servant.
 
I was anxious about the fate of my children, and the Arabs told me they had been taken in by other Arabs; I sought them but did not find them. Since orphans were carried to Constantinople, I went there in the hope of finding them.
 
They must have died, because on the feast day of Bairam, the Turks took the thousands of children of Der el Zor outside the city, where they were burned alive. Only a few children survived by throwing themselves in the Euphrates [River], then gaining the further shore.
 
-         Gadarinée Dadourian

---

 
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things.  The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.
 
The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. 
 
~John Stewart Mill

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Afghanistan, 2011
 
Sam Alexander, 1982-2011
 
Marine Sam Alexander, 28, and Lieutenant Ollie Augustin, 23, based at Bickleigh Barracks, were killed by an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) on Friday.
 
The men were both in 42 Commando Royal Marines. Between 400 and 500 people lined the streets of Wootton Bassett yesterday afternoon to pay their respects after the bodies arrived at RAF Lyneham.
 
The cortege stopped briefly in front of the town's war memorial as family and friends of the two marines laid flowers on the hearses. Cans of beer were also placed on the roof of the hearse carrying Marine Alexander's body.
 
Marine Alexander was awarded the Military Cross in 2009 after he charged at the Taliban in order to provide cover for an injured comrade.
 
Sam's grandfather lives in Jersey.
 
 

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Older men declare war.  But it is the youth that must fight and die.
      ~Herbert Hoover

Only the dead have seen the end of war. 
       ~Plato

The PPU and the Jersey Connection

In the Star Trek episode "The City on the Edge of Forever", the ship's surgeon "Bones" McCoy travels back in history and saves the life of a tireless worker in the slums, Edith Keeler. She would have died, but lived, and her movement met with Roosevelt to keep America out of the war. As a result, Nazi Germany did not lose the Second World War, and became the dominant power in the western world. Kirk puts history right, after going back in the past, and falling love with Keeler, he has to stop Bones from saving her, and let her die.

Kirk: "She was right; peace was the way." Spock: "She was right...but at the wrong time."

There was some talk on the radio this morning about white poppies, which are promoted by the Peace Pledge Union. This came about when, in 1934, the Reverend Canon Dick Sheppard invited men who cared for peace to send him a postcard. The card was to say: "I renounce war, and I will never support or sanction another."

Why should such an invitation be resisted? To what, after all, did it commit you beyond the act of posting a card? Within a year 80,000 people had renounced war, and the Peace Pledge Union had been founded by those who had signed a pledge which, when war came, was honoured no more than are most temperance pledges. Most of those who joined the Peace Pledge Union, however, did so in the belief that if they gathered enough members war would become impossible. There could be no doubt that the movement was an enormous success. (1)

By November 1937, Peace Pledge Union had 133,000 members and a journal called "Peace News" was launched. Some people wore white poppies on Armistice Day, and some both red and white poppies. But as Germany re-armed, and Hitler prepared for war, the Fascist movements, both in Germany and Britain, saw the Peace Movement as a means by which they could prevent any action being taken against Germany.

For the Fascists, and at the time "fascism" was a word which was often worn with pride, the great enemy was communism. The Catholic Church in Spain had committed itself to Franco's fascism because it feared communism, and the same was happening with the Peace Pledge Union. George Orwell, always more of a political realist than an idealist, saw this happening very clearly:

The most interesting development of the anti-war front has been the interpenetration of the pacifist movement by Fascist ideas, especially anti-Semitism. After Dick Sheppard's death British pacifism seems to have suffered a moral collapse; it has not produced any significant gesture nor even many martyrs, and only about 15 per cent of the membership of the Peace Pledge Union now appear to be active. But many of the surviving pacifists now spin a line of talk indistinguishable from that of the Blackshirts ("Stop this Jewish war" etc), and the actual membership of the PPU and the British Union overlap to some extent. (2)

When the Chamberlain government was looking to avoid war at Munich, the government accepted an invitation to meet with pacifist groups, such as the PPU, as it was thought these groups would be "disposed rather to support than to criticize" Chamberlain's actions at Munich. But in fact the PPU wanted to go further still:

Despite the initial support granted by the Peace Pledge Union, Munich did not satisfy pacifists. Indeed, by the time of the deputation for a new peace conference in March 1939, pacifist groups were demanding that the government be more active in realizing a "constructive" initiative for peace.(3)

As Zara Steiner noted, "it was paradoxical, if understandable, that as the real war-clouds gathered, the PPU became more absolute in its 'pacificism'."

The links between Blackshirts and Peace can be see in the case of Eric Pleasants. He had been a member of Mosely's Fascist Blackshirts and joined the Peace Pledge Union where he ended up in Jersey to avoid conscription - not many people realise that there were around 100 conscientious objectors sent over to Jersey to work on farms.

Pleasants met with Dennis Leister who between them and two other unsavory characters managed to set up a black market enterprise after the German Occupation. They got into trouble with the police, and attempted to return to England after trying to steel a motor boat.

But they were captured by the Germans and charged with stealing German petrol. They both received two year prison sentences and were moved to Romanville prison near Paris. After being transferred to Kreuzberg, Upper Silesia, they pretended to be captured Merchant Seamen and were eventually transferred to Milag early 1944, where they joined the British Free Corps.

SS-Mann Eric Reginald Pleasants
SS-Mann Dennis John Leister

Both men were mostly motivated by the opportunity to better food, alcohol and access to women. Pleasants frankly admitted later that he "was in it to have a good time."

Pleasants ended up being captured for espionage by the Russians in June 1948, and was repatriated to England in 1954.

In his autobiography, historian G. G. Coulton warned of the dangers in the late 1930s where "real peace would be gambled away for false peace", and described exactly the kind of person like Pleasants:

This Peace Pledge Union required nothing more than the cheap promise not to do what scarcely any sane man ever wishes to do except under extreme necessity. It implied no other moral code whatever. So far from endangering the signer's life, it offered the most obvious escape from such suffering or violent death as might fall to the lot of the ordinary unsigning citizen. In short, it was as convenient to the slacker or the coward as to the most lofty idealist.

References

(1) The Thirties: A Dream Revolved. Contributors: Julian Symons, 1960
(2) My Country Right or Left, 1940-1943. Volume: 2., George Orwell,Sonia Orwell, Ian Angus, 2000
(3) Arms Limitation and Disarmament: Restraints on War, 1899-1939, B. J.C. Mckercher, 1992
(4) The Lights That Failed: European International History, 1919-1933, Zara Steiner, 2005
(5) http://www.mercantilemarine.org/archive/index.php/t-4875.html?s=0f677637c62deba7f61e6e132d73b4be
(6) http://bills-bunker.de/64090.html
(7)Fourscore Years: An Autobiography. G. G. Coulton, 1944

Purple Poppies

I am glad that the life of pandas is so dull by human standards, for our efforts at conservation have little moral value if we preserve creatures only as human ornaments; I shall be impressed when we show solicitude for warty toads and slithering worms. (Stephen Jay Gould)

I wore a purple poppy this year, and it seems I am not the only one. It was not in place of the red poppy, but in addition to it. They are also starting to make the news across England:

With just days to go before Remembrance Day, a purple poppy has surfaced in Edmonton, and it's raising some eyebrows. The purple poppy is designed to recognize animals who served and lost their lives in war. Kevin Stewart brought 30 of the poppies to Earth's General Store on Whyte Avenue. The store is out of the poppies already. The purple poppy originated in England, where they are supported by the British Legion. Many battle sites throughout Europe even display the poppies, but some Canadian veterans are having a harder time getting on board. (1)

And in London, the well known campaigner for human rights, Peter Tatchell was also supporting the purple poppy:

At the Animals In War memorial off Park Lane, campaigner Peter Tatchell was the guest speaker. He wore a purple poppy, which was introduced five years ago by charity Animal Aid to commemorate animals' suffering during wartime. (2)

But there are other ways animals are commemorated for their part in wars and conflict zones as well. In 1943, Maria Dickin insitituted the Dickin Medal:

The Dickin Medal was instituted in 1943 in the United Kingdom by Maria Dickin to honour the work of animals in war. It is a bronze medallion, bearing the words "For Gallantry" and "We Also Serve" within a laurel wreath, carried on ribbon of striped green, dark brown and pale blue. It is awarded to animals that have displayed "conspicuous gallantry or devotion to duty while serving or associated with any branch of the Armed Forces or Civil Defence Units". The award is commonly referred to as "the animals' Victoria Cross". (Wikipedia)

It was replaced in 1949 by the PDSA's (People's Dispensary for Sick Animals) Silber Medal. And the most recent animal to be honoured was Treo, a black labrador:

Treo, a black Labrador which sniffed out bombs in southern Afghanistan has been awarded the animal equivalent of the Victoria Cross - called the Dickin medal. The eight-year-old 'Treo' twice found hidden bombs while on tour in Afghanistan with the 104 Military Working Dog Support Unit. He is now retired and living with his handler, Sergeant David Heyhoe.(3)

What is the importance of these kinds of actions, from wearing purple poppies to the Dickin medal? The psychologist Oliver James says human beings have a powerful desire to bestow human attributes on animals, and this is the reason. But I don't think that is the whole story, or even an important part of the story, certainly not when I wear a purple poppy.

For me, it represents an acknowledgement that animals have been brought into the field of human conflict, and we are responsible for doing so - and we cannot just treat animals as cannon fodder, as disposable assets, mere tools to be disposed of as we wish. In other words, it is part of a greater attitude to the natural world - to we treat the world as purely there for our convenience, to be pillaged as we wish, with animals such as the great whales hunted to extinction, or do we regard ourselves as stewards of the planet? The "instrumentalist" view of the natural world is shown in C.S. Lewis "fairytale for adults", "That Hideous Strength", where one of the characters contrasts the old Celtic tradition with the modernist Belbury:

"Merlin is the reverse of Belbury. He's at the opposite extreme. He is the last vestige of an old order in which matter and spirit were, from our modern point of view, confused. For him every operation on Nature is a kind of personal contact, like coaxing a child or stroking one's horse. After him came the modern man to whom Nature is something dead--a machine to be worked, and taken to bits if it won't work as the way he pleases" CS Lewis, That Hideous Strength

And this is the crux of the matter - how we treat animals in war - as biological machines of no more merit than a tank or machine gun, or as part of the same world that we ourselves inhabit, is also part of our understanding of the world in which we live. And that is why purple poppies are important, not because of what feelings we impute to animals, but as a significant part of how we think about nature itself. Are we gods, to whom the natural world, like the fickle Greek gods, is merely there for our amusement and pleasure? Or do values of conservation, or the importance of animals and species, form part of a whole pattern in which we ourselves must play a significant role, if we are to survive?

I will conclude, therefore, with a quotation from Gerry Durrell, most apt for a Jersey blogger, in which - far better than myself - he shows how the jigsaw of conservation fits together:

Firstly what does conservation mean? It is not merely the saving from extinction of such species as the Notornis, the Leadbetters Possum or the Leathery Turtle; this is important work but it is only part of the problem. You cannot begin to preserve any species of animal unless you preserve the habitat in which it dwells. Disturb or destroy that habitat and you will exterminate the species as surely as if you had shot it. So conservation means that you have to preserve forest and grassland, river and lake, even the sea itself. This is not only vital for the preservation of animal life generally, but for the future existence of man himself - a point that seems to escape many people.

We have inherited an incredibly beautiful and complex garden, but the trouble is that we have been appallingly bad gardeners. We have not bothered to acquaint ourselves with the simplest principles of gardening. By neglecting our garden, we are storing up for ourselves, in the not very distant future, a world catastrophe as bad as any atomic war, and we are doing it with all the bland complacency of an idiot child chopping up a Rembrandt with a pair of scissors. We go on, year after year, all over the world, creating dust bowls and erosion, cutting down forests and overgrazing our grasslands, polluting one of our most vital commodities - water - with industrial filth and all the time we are breeding with the ferocity of the Brown Rat, and wondering why there is not enough food to go round. We now stand so aloof from nature that we think we are God. This has always been a dangerous supposition.(4)

Links:
(1) http://www.globaltvbc.com/Purple+poppies+honour+animal+heroes/3802534/story.html
(2) http://www.westendextra.com/news/2010/nov/poppies-fountain-remembrance-day-across-westminster-servicemen-and-women-honoured-pete
(3) http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/news/2010/02/100224_dog_medal.shtml
(4) Two in the Bush (1966), Gerald Durrell

Grey Ghosts and Voices

May Wedderburn Cannan (1893-1973) was a British poet who was active in World War I. Although she is not as well known today as other war poets, in her day, her poetry about the war was well received, and of the war poets of the Great War, she is one of my favourites. For anyone wishing to know more, I would recommend the recently published anthology "The Tears of War: The Love Story of a Young Poet and a War Hero", complied by her granddaughter Charlotte Fyfe, which has her poems and extracts from letters between May and her fiancé Bevil Quiller-Couch.

Her memoir of her childhood, the war years, and those years immediately afterwards (written towards the end of her life) was published under the title "Grey Ghosts and Voices". In 1918, she was working as a Secretary for the espionage department at the War Office Department in Paris, and at the heart of the armistice. For Remembrance day this year, here is an extract from Grey Ghosts and Voices which gives her vivid account of the final days of the war, the joy of peace, and the sadness of loss:

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On the night of 4th/5th of November they fired their last Barrage and the Guards entered Mauberge. They were at Villars Pol.

Bertha withdrew. We watched the flags move on the big map in the Colonel's room and could not believe what we saw, and turned to our other enemies; the bitter cold and the 'flu. It was the fore-runner of the great epidemic of 1919.

The Americans, who were short of experience, offered us jobs saying that they would pay us double what we earned and were genuinely hurt and puzzled when we refused them. Insatiable, they organised a "Get together" Meeting in the Trocadero for which they sent us an invitation and the Colonel directed that at least three of us must go. There were French, English and American blocks in the rising seats, and a platform draped with the Allied Flags. Mrs Alfred Lyttleton made a speech; Monsieur Pichon made a speech; some American made a speech. Everyone patted everyone on the back and the English sat rather silent among the general applause. It had been said that Lloyd George was coming over, but in the end, it was Lord Derby, the British Ambassador, who spoke for England.

It hung in the air. A feeling of terrified uncertainty, almost of terrified hope. People in the Pension began to eye us curiously obviously longing, but not quite daring, to ask us if we knew anything.

On the morning of November 11th I was called into the Colonel's room "to take some notes from the telephone." They were all there and got up and made room for me at the table. I think they must have thought that I knew shorthand which I didn't. A voice, very clear, thank God, said "Ready?" and began to dictate the Terms of the Armistice. They muttered a bit crowding round me and I said fiercely "Oh, shut up, I can't hear" and the skies didn't fall.

I wrote in my private short-long-hand and half my mind was in a prayer that I should be able to read it back. I could feel my heart thumping and hear the silence in the room round me_ When the voice stopped I said mechanically "understood" and got up. I made four copies of what I had written and took them in and went back to my little office staff and told them. I can't remember much what we said: I can only remember being so cold, and crying, and trying not to let the others see.

That night it was all over Paris. There were sounds of cheering and rejoicing down the Boulevards as I walked home.

What I thought of was "Recessional." The Pension produced some champagne at dinner and we drank the loyal toast.

And then across the table G. lifted her glass to me and said "Absent". I did not know her story nor she mine, but I drank to my friends who were dead and to my friends who, wounded, imprisoned, battered, shaken, exhausted, were alive in a new, and a terrible world...

Darkness Visible

This is remembrance day, and here is a poem about the cost of war and the suffering of the innocent. For it is always the innocent who suffer.

In so many wars and conflicts, neighbour turns against neighbour, as happened in Rwanda, in Bosnia, is still  is even now happening in parts of Thailand, where Buddhists and Muslims who have been neighbours for years now are polarised against each other. Elsewhere, the fight for power, as in the Congo and Sudan, leaves millions displaced in starvation conditions.

Today is a day for remembering those who died to make the world a safer place, and I would not belittle that, but it is also a day for remembering the innocents, caught up in conflicts that are not of their making, but for which they have to pay a heavy price.

Darkness Visible

War torn, rockets raining down
Upon the innocent, here a crown
Of thorns on many heads; times
Of fear and courage oftentimes
Entwined into a tapestry of days;
And where will come the rays
Of dawn? Here darkness visible
Across the land, an intangible
Shadow falling in some hearts
As these grow so cold in parts:
Hardened against reaching out,
Instead, enraged, they shout
Their anger. Cain killing Abel,
His own brother. Another fable
Tells of Babel, of many voices,
But no listening, so no choices,
As each person rants unheeding
And so very deaf to the pleading
Of the mother, of the small child
Crying out in pain. They are defiled,
And innocents massacred once more,
By those who wage a bloody war,
By those who claim to be so right,
They will not cease an endless fight.
They claim that God is on their side,
But it is untrue. For he does hide
Among the poor, who suffer hurt
His face, starved, ravaged. Assert
This: not in brute power his grace
But bleeding, with a wounded face.

Remembrance - 11 November 2008

Remembrance - 11 November 2008

3000 BC at the Dolmen

The tribe can rest now, and our stone temple is complete. Into the side chambers, the tribal priests will place the grave goods - amulets, bracelets, and some of the bones of the ancestors. The fires will burn brightly down the passage, and we will chant the sacred songs, and the past will be very close tonight. The air is thin between this world and the next, and we build this to remember the past, our ancestors who will always be with us, and as long as stone will endure, may not be forgotten. Most are buried in earthen graves, but these bones are a token, a sign for the tribe, and it is enough. At the turning of the sun, at the matching of the night and day, and especially at the cross quarter day when the nights are growing long, we shall see the patterns in the stars, and know that it is time. We shall gather with the shades all who have gone before, and all their hopes shall be our hopes, and we shall pray for a good harvest and a mild winter. The fires will burn bright, and we shall remember them.

11th November 1918, In the Trenches

Today, we are told, sees an end to the mud, all the cold and wet, the noise of the guns, and the shells pounding down. Too late for some of my friends. And we are all wounded now, one way or another, with scars in our memories, which will remain with us until the day we die.

Now all we can do is to hope for a better world. We have been promised a land fit for heroes. It seems like only yesterday, but another world, a bright and sunny day, in which we marched up and down the parade ground. The band played a rousing marching song, and we felt sure we would find victory; we were full of thoughts of valour and brave deeds. Little did we know the despair and misery that would be our lot; the lice, the trench foot, the iron rations, and the endless mud and rain. This was, until today, our lot, for those of us lucky enough to survive, and those not driven mad by the endless noise of guns.

And when we are old, we will look back and remember those Islanders who died here, in a foreign field, friends and comrades in arms, taken in their youth, never to grow old, as we who are left grow old.

But our hopes are now for a brave new world, fresh shoots of spring, and families to build in a time of peace. Will there be that world so promised by the politicians? Or will we be forgotten, as some have said, only remembered on ceremonial occasions once a year, standing at cenotaphs across the land, but forgotten for the rest of the time? Will we grow old, struggling to make ends meet, fretting over food and warmth, while those we fought for, and their descendants, stand and make fine speeches, and enjoy acclaim and wealth? Will we decline into an old age in which we again face hardship, frugal rations, and the biting cold of wintertime? Who will really remember us?

1944, The Normandy Beaches

We landed on Normandy to the sound of machine gun fire, and shells from the German positions. The carnage was dreadful, and I saw many of my mates fall down beneath as they struggled up the beaches. But now, the day is over, and we have won a victory, and taken a beachhead, and we move inland tomorrow. The great attack is over, and victory is in our sights. A time to take stock, and reflect of future hopes, if any of us come out of this alive.

One thing is certain, we will not be cheated like our grandfathers and fathers were, with glib promises of a land fit for heroes. Where there is the chance, we will take it, and we will vote for change. It is time for change. People are dying here, and they are dying so that all those of use lucky enough to survive will have hope. Well, you can't have that if all those who didn't fight are in charge, in the same old way.

The mood is that we can do this; we will look forward not to just let the politicians do it, but to elect our own people. The English soldiers are already talking of Attlee and Labour. Churchill may have won the war, but when war is past, we want people looking forward, to changes, to free health for all, housing, a decent pension, social security, and a fairer society.

We want a world built from the ranks of the ordinary soldier, the common man. If we are to remember our fallen comrades, we shall pay tribute to them in this way, by changing the world. I don't know if there is another world, like the padre says, but I know we don't want pie in the sky, but fair shares for all in this world. How much we build a better world, I do not know, but this will be our memorial to the dead; our monument to their lives. In this time of hope, we shall look back and not forget that ordinary folk paid with their life's blood for our future. Yes, we shall build a better world. And we shall remember them.


1975, Northern Ireland

I would not have thought our Islanders could be caught up in this conflict, but they have. I am here as a representative of the funeral directors to convey, with dignity and respect, the remains of a poor lad shot and killed here last month. To the rest of the world, the conflict here must seem a very private little war, but it still has the power to destroy lives.

I remember my grandfather taking part in the Great War, the war to end all wars. Only it was not, because then there was the Second World War, in which my father fought. Warfare has become less global, but smaller private wars continue, many still die, and so often those fighting have lost sight of all reason why the war began; hatreds become inbred, and even those who are brought in to keep the peace get caught up in the madness.

Now there will be a new name on the Cenotaph; a new date, and a new war, in which we remember the dead.

600 AD, A Remote Bay in the Island

We landed today in our small boats. This is an empty bay, with rocks at either side, and no signs of habitation; here we can settle and begin our small community. The Lord gave us a strong wind, and blew us onto the beaches, bringing us safely through the storm, in his great mercy. Under the shadow of his wings, we came safely into harbour. Blessed be his name.

Once we have settled, we will seek out those who live here, and trade with them, for we have many skilled artisans, skilled in working with metal and wood. We have scribes who can read and write, and who can bring the Lord's word of peace and joy to the people who live in this land. For in our travels, across the channel dividing our lands from these southern regions, we have come across much sorrow, tribal laws which are not just, where the widow and the orphan and the stranger are forgotten. We shall teach these peoples to know the justice of the Lord, and his mercy on us all. For we are all strangers in a strange land.

There is wood here, and we can fashion a shelter for worship, in which we can pray for the peoples of this Island. We shall gather the names of their ancestors, and the names of the living, and all their songs and stories, and we shall take care that nothing is lost that the Lord has entrusted to us. We shall light our candles, break bread, and we shall remember them.

For the Fallen

Though usually only the fourth verse is read, at the moving Remembrance ceremony at the end of Doctor Who (Human Nature/Family of Blood) the third verse is also read, out of its relevance to the young boys from the school going to war ("They went with songs to the battle, they were young"). A very special poem.

For the Fallen

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children, England mourns for her dead across the sea. Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit, Fallen in the cause of the free. Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres. There is music in the midst of desolation And a glory that shines upon our tears. They went with songs to the battle, they were young, Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow. They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted, They fell with their faces to the foe. They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old; Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning We will remember them. They mingle not with their laughing comrades again; They sit no more at familiar tables at home; They have no lot in our labour of the day-time; They sleep beyond England's foam. But where our desires are and our hopes profound, Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight, To the innermost heart of their own land they are known As the stars are known to the Night; As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust, Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain, As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness, To the end, to the end, they remain. Laurence Binyon (1869-1943)