18th November 2005

Last Sunday’s Remembrance Day service in Grove Park was wonderful. The sun shone. The British Legion veterans looked proud. The cadet forces marched past smartly. Best of all, there were hundreds of people there to pay their respects to the fallen.

It reminded me of another service this summer at my local parish church in Winscombe, commemorating the 50th anniversary of VE and VJ day. It’s unusual to remember a church service 5 months after it happened, but something extraordinary happened that day.

It seemed like an ordinary service until the sermon. The preacher got to his feet and explained to the Sunday School children that we’d be living in a dictatorship if Hitler had won the war. We owed our freedom to the people who’d fought for us in the struggle, and that most of them had died.

So far so normal. But then he did something extraordinary. He asked the veterans in the congregation to stand up. There was a short pause, and then half a dozen elderly men rose slowly to their feet. Everyone turned in their seats to look at these quiet, proud men, and suddenly realised that the preacher’s Sunday School story was real. These people, who we were used to seeing buying bread and papers in the local shops, had risked their lives and seen their friends die. For us. Somebody started to clap, and soon everyone was applauding our very own, local heroes.

And I hope something similar happened all around the country last Sunday, in villages and towns like ours. It’s easy to forget, particularly when most people don’t serve in the forces anymore, exactly what our grandparents gave us. The veterans are getting fewer and frailer every year. If the rest of us remember them, we can make sure their sacrifice was not in vain.