We Will Never Forget - Will we?

Last week was Remembrance Week, and we remembered the victims of both world wars, and of any conflict up to and including the present day. 52 years after the end of the Second World War, planet Earth hasn't yet experienced warfare on the same scale. At least, we haven't had World War 3 yet. We've had the Cold War, the Vietnam War and now the Iraq War, and hostilities not directly involving England are always going on. But nothing has been recognized as a "World War", so to speak. Which is probably fair enough.

While sitting in chapel last Sunday, listening to the names of countless old masters and boys being read off the school's honour boards, hearing the Last Post played on the trumpet, singing stirring battle hymns, I had a look around the chapel and noticed something. Everyone was old. No jokes, the average age (bearing in mind there were about 300 boarding 13-18 year olds in there) was about three-hundred odd. And that got me thinking. I had a couple of long sermons to do the maths, and this is what I worked out:

Assuming the youngest you could get in the army is 18, to have lived through the last year of WW2, you would have to be 81. Not impossible, I admit. But in 5 years time, they'll be 86. Still quite possible for them to be alive, but give it 10 years and they're 91. An ample portion of war veterans will be dead by then. So who will "Remember them?" Well, their children I suppose.

But take it back a little further - the First World War. To have lived through that, you would have to be 107. Unlikely. Even your children would be getting on nowadays.



Now I really don't want to belittle the occasion, I honestly don't. It's noble, and honest, and respectful. It would be appalling if we didn't remember them. But that's my point - give it 20 years there will be basically no war veterans left. Only their children will be left to remember them. But the remaining generations have no experience of war. We didn't know them before they were sent to war. We never lived through a blitz, through air raids, through our loved ones and family being annihilated by people we had never met - will we remember them? Sure, the occasion will still be observed, that's only natural. But I have a sad feeling that the enthusiasm for the event will dwindle in coming years.

I'll finish with the beautiful piece of poetry that I find really makes the occasion:

For the Fallen

They went with songs to the battle, they were young.

Straight of limb, true of eyes, 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.

Laurence Binyon

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