Do we really remember them?

‘At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them.’  Those well-known words, from Laurence Binyon’s famous poem, “For the Fallen”, are heard repeated each November at Remembrance services and events up and down the country.  The words come easily to the tongue, but do we realise their true significance and challenge?

I have been pondering in the real meaning of the promise, ‘we will remember them.’  Of course, it does mean that we remember the sacrifice of those who gave their lives for us; we honour the memory of the countless numbers who died.  No-one is still alive who was part of World War One, but we do have names and images, together with both written and spoken accounts.  But moving as some of the Remembrance services and events have been, especially with this year being the one hundredth anniversary of the end of the Great War, is it enough to simply remember them in this way?  It seems to me that to truly remember means to ask deep questions of ourselves, to ponder seriously on the significance of their sacrifice and the example they have set for us. 

Harold Parry was a young man who was killed in action on 6 May, 1917 by a German shell at Ypres, in Flanders, at just 20 years of age.  Before the war, Parry had been a prolific writer of poetry.  In the bitter experiences of the trenches he turned again, for relief, to poetry, both reading and writing, and letters home to family and friends.  He could express himself clearly in both prose and verse, and his writings revealed what the young men who died in “the war to end all wars” thought about their experiences in that terrible conflict. 

Following his death, a book, ‘In Memoriam Harold Parry” was published.  It is a tribute to Harold Parry’s life, and includes some of his poems and letters home.  It is a moving and poignant volume.  In one of his letters, Harold Parry reflects on the significance of the war and the sacrifices made; he also ponders on the future, and whether things will really change for the better:

“I wonder if afterwards mankind will sink back into the slough from which the war has brought it; if men will occupy their lives in things purely unnecessary  and devote their brain and ability to the lust for gold; or whether from the ashes of our dead, and from the ashes of all the dead on all the battlefields, will arise a purer, better life - a life of ideals, however narrow, a life which will strive to find beauty and which, in the most unexpected and unlikely places, will discover the greatest blessing that God has given us here - love.

If so, the sacrifice will not be vain, and the future generations in their happiness and through their love will be able to pay the debt they owe to the poor fellows who have died for them and have found their rest, face upwards to the sky, far, far removed from all that life holds for them of love and peace, happiness and hope.”

I find those words to be deeply challenging.  If Harold Parry could look down on our world, our society, today, to see how we are, how we treat each other and the kind of things which we make our priorities, would he think that his sacrifice was worthwhile?  By far the most significant way in which we can ‘remember them’ is to live our lives in a way which honours their sacrifice and fulfils Harold Parry’s dream of a world where love is known.