Shoulder to Shoulder
with those who serve.
Approx 150-180 staff and students attended the 20 minute service outside the Drill Hall Library on campus.
Why do we remember?
What is the purpose of remembrance?
The purpose of remembrance I suggest
to us this morning, is to remind
ourselves of who we are.
We remember to make sense of our identity -
individually and collectively as a society.
We recall the sacrifice of those
precious lives because
“for our tomorrow they gave their today!”
So today we remember.
Remember Ypres, Gallipoli, the Somme,
Mons and Verdun.
Remember the Western Desert,
El Alamein, the Normandy beaches.
Remember Coventry, Dresden, Hiroshima
and the Burma Road. Remember Korea,
the Falkland Islands, Northern Ireland,
the Balkans, East Timor, Afghanistan
and the Gulf.
Remember the 130 men who lost their lives
in this Drill Hall on September 3rd, 1917.
Remember the courage, the companionship,
the ingenuity, the spirit of working together
for a common cause, the planning together
for a better world that would come with peace.
Remember the call to arms,
the patriotic songs, the partings which were
such sweet sorrow. The sound of the drum,
the skirl of the pipe…
Remember the carnage; the colossal horror
of war. Remember the widows of sixty years
and more, the old men and women who
never knew their fathers.
Remember the love that was lost,
the wisdom wasted,
the minds that are still pained by memories.
Remember the families bereft by
recent wars and conflict.
Remember this day the children who will die
while nation fights nation.
Remember the One who asks us
to remember them.
Followers of Jesus around the world
eat and drink at communion to remember.
We share a meal to remind ourselves of
who we are: recipients of the extravagant love
of God, who gave his Son for us.
The Kohima Epitaph:
When you go home tell them of us and
say,
for your tomorrow we gave our today.
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