"At the going down of the sun............."

At the going down of the sun, and in the morning. We will remember them.
These wonderful words have been ringing in my ears since I left the Marine Theatre some hours ago. Words designed to make you look at your heart, and look back on your life, feel for those you've loved and lost and give thanks for those who still survive. When Ken Whetlor first asked us to record this event, I agreed immediately. Its a passionate programme with a message that needs to be addressed by us all. Pip Evans said, "I know its not your sort of event Nomad", but I have to say it is.
I had no claims to being there, in among this community of friends who shared experiences so deeply, they can never forget. Listening to Dave Manners excellent commentary, in which by the aid of projected images he took us on a journey of wars, starting with WW1, (the war to end all wars?) and progressing to the present day, with injuries and death to serving men in Afghanistan and Iraq. I looked back at my own life, and understood how much all these wars had affected my family, almost from the dawn of the Twentieth Century. As a child, I remember in my Grandmother's house in SE London, a circular brass plaque on the sideboard, and being told the stories of men I'd never seen and never met, and never would. I had an Uncle who was rescued at Dunkirk. I heard the stories about my family being bombed out of their home in Forest Hill, London, and subsequently being bombed again in Peckham. My Father was a Leading Aircraftman in the RAF. My Mother served in the WAAF. I grew up with my Mothers unsorted bagful of wartime photographs, each of which told a story, theres my Dad next to a Spitfire, just leaning on it like he owns it, and there's Rommel, goggles pushed up on his forehead, smiling into the desert wind in his armoured car. Who could have taken that picture? How did it come to be. Then there are lines of tents in a desert, followed by lines of cemetary crosses, in endless lines. How did that happen. How did that come to be. How did I come to be.
My birthday is the 25th May 1946, won't take you much Maths to figure out when I was conceived, I'm not a War Baby, I'm one of those confounded baby boomers, and I'm one of the first of them. I'm 61 years old. In all my life, I've never had a war on the land in which I live. I've never been forced by circumstance to go to war. I've never done any military service, and I'm sure that there are a few men here who might suggest a spell of it might STILL do me a bit of good. I have to admit, they're probably right...........
Its a high price to pay, a terrible price that in the end damages all of us. My family, my ancestor's, your family, everyones family, paid dearly for the peace and freedom we experience now.
And the sad thing is that war's still occur, all over this beautiful world we live in. Most of the world isn't able to live in the same wealth as any of us in Britain. When I heard David Manners say, in reference to the Battle of Paschendale, 3,000 lives lost for every yard gained, my heart almost turned over. Its impossible to imagine what those men went through, even how you can survive mentally after being in such a place. And looking back now, most of us would wonder what they were fighting for.
We must mourn the dead, its both our right and our duty to do so. We must celebrate the living too, and if there's any fighting in the future, I wish it was a fight to end war. Forever. But then I'm a known idealist, I've grown up in a free idealistic society. My parents, like others of their generation, just wanted to live in peace after the constant suffering of two world wars. They wanted me to have all that they never had, and you can't help looking back, wondering if my father had he lived, would have thought about my life, if he would approve of my life in this free society that he fought so hard to acheive.
Most people only know those central lines of this poem by Robert Binyon who died in 1943, so if you don't know it, here is the whole 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 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 laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of 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.