Lest We Forget

9 November is Remembrance Sunday in England, and, since I started my blog, I have tried most years to honor the sacrifices made by those who served their country, but more importantly, remember those who lost their lives in defence of our freedom.

My father served 9 years in the Army, 4 of those in some horrid battles in the jungles of Burma. It’s only decades later, after receiving his army records and reading the reports of the battles his unit participated in, that I truly began to understand some of the absolute horrors he saw. Like many of his generation, he would never talk about those times. He lived with those horrors and had nightmares for decades after he returned to England.

Every year, without fail, my father would buy poppies from a seller on the street and would proudly wear it on his coat as he solemnly stood in front of the Cenotaph for Remembrance Sunday Service. He did this every year until he died.

It wasn’t until I started my genealogy that I realized how many family members I had who had served – and lost their lives in World War I. I have made it a part of my genealogy story to try to find out as much as I can about those relatives who fought and lost their lives and to commemorate them, and their sacrifice, as part of my family tree. As World War I has now passed from living memory, it is so important not to forget. Sadly, many of them died too young to have had a wife and children, and are therefore not present on family trees, but I ensure that they are on mine. I have cousins as young as 17 who lost their lives on those battle fields. 17 – it is unimaginable what it must have been like to have been working in a dark, dank mine one day and then fighting for your family in the trenches of France just a few months later.

My hometown cathedral places poppies on the floor at this time of year to commemorate those lives. What I had never thought about, until just recently, was how this cathedral had been the place where many of my relatives that fought and lost their lives were christened and married. That same place that had been the site of happy days now allows us to reflect on their loss. And we should reflect on their loss. We should never forget.

The names below are some of those relatives who were Christened/married in this same cathedral and never returned home to their families.

William Taylor – 17

Henry Victor Close – 21

Joseph Ducker – 23

James Moody – 22

Albert Pinder – 26

George Earnshaw – 21

Lionel Watson – 21

Frank Snowdin – D.C.M – 21

Robert Ducker – 17

Derek Howcraft – 21

John Beresford – 19

Charles Beresford – 19

Edwin Taylor – 23

Joseph Holland – 34

Joseph Bageley – 19

Douglas Wilson – 27

Roland Wilson – 24

In Flanders fields, the poppies blow
     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.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
   Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
                          In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
   The torch; be yours to hold it high.
   If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
                            In Flanders fields.