I have to admit that I largely avoided Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day in the States. Memorial Day has become more about the start of summer and car sales than about remembering those we’ve lost. Veteran’s Day has largely become too nationalistic and militaristic for my tastes.

In the U.K., November 11th, and the Sunday nearest to it are dedicated to Remembrance Day (and Remembrance Sunday). The original focus was Armistace Day, commemorating the end of World War 1, the “war to end all wars”. After World War II, with it’s millions more killed, the day was expanded and renamed to include them, and later those killed in subsequent wars.

One of the things we immediately liked about Remembrance Day over the celebrations in the States was the tone. As I said, Veteran’s Day and Memorial Day had become cheapened to me, both by commercial and nationalistic interests. It became more about “rah, rah, America” than it did about honouring those who served and died. In the UK, our sense is that there is still a bit of nationalism, but the focus by far is on The Remembering…not to celebrate war, but to remind us of the incredible cost of war…in order that it may never happen again.

While Covid largely caused cancellation of last year’s ceremonies, we did experience a bit of the Remembrance Sunday parade in Basingstoke in 2019. It wasn’t a parade of waving and cheering, though, but of solemn walking and remembering.

I thought that I rather liked that, but today I stumbled on to something that I think I like even better.

I finished writing my sermon about 10:30 this morning and decided to go for a walk down to the War Memorial to observe any event going. To my surprise, there was no official event today. Everything is being done Sunday. Upon my arrival, there was just a retired soldier and his wife. In the lead up to 11:00, we stood in silence reading the names on the Memorial, with about 5-10 other people wandering up.

At 11:00 we all fell silent for the required two minutes, at the end of which the anonymous soldier recited, from memory, the famous stanza of poetry:

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.

He then quietly walked away, wiping tears from his eyes.

No pomp, no ceremony, no parades or bands or waving of flags, (all of which are fine and will have their place on Sunday), but just a quiet remembering of those that lost their lives protecting their countries….and a quiet prayer that it never happens again.