A Few Thoughts on Remembrance Sunday 2014

On this Remembrance Sunday of 2014 in particular and with so many 100th Anniversary Commemorations of the start of the Great War having already taken place, it is perhaps easy to forget that one hundred years ago in November 1914, the war was just three months old. Total cessation of hostilities was still over four years away. So this year is different because in reality we are remembering something that in 1914 had not happened yet. We are in fact commemorating the 96th Armistice Day.

Why is this important? Well, by November 1914 two families of our parishes had already lost a son each. So families and friends were already in mourning and completely traumatised. We can well imagine that the reality of what was happening to the world gone mad, was beginning to come home forcefully to the rest of the families of our parishes. Gone was the early jingoism of going off to give the “Hun” a good hiding. There would be no glorious tales of heroics and “derring do” at the Christmas tables of 1914. Instead there would be a terrible sense of loss, of foreboding and a terror of what might be in store for the families of all those young men who joined Kitchener’s new armies in such haste just a few months earlier.

The small professional British Army (BEF) had been severely depleted on the western front. The seemingly unstoppable onslaught of the German war machine, the British retreat from Mons and subsequent fierce fighting, the German advance only stopped by epic French Army resistance at the Marne had left the British professional army in tatters. Later fighting at Ypres only adding to the casualty lists. Now for 1915 and future years, it would be up to the thousands of young volunteers from all over Britain and Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa and other far off parts of the British Empire, to continue to prosecute the “Great War for Civilisation”.

For now, most were still training. However, if anyone in our parishes was foolish enough to think that two casualties was the extent of the price to be paid, they would be gravely mistaken. The price for 1915 and subsequent years would be much higher.

Michael Lee November 2014