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David Gerrard Remembrance Day 8th November 2009 |
| Today is the 91st Anniversary of the day when the guns fell silent at the end of the First World War. We might imagine that after all this time the need for such an act of remembrance might be nearly over, but it is not so. We still have troops fighting and dying in Afghanistan. There has been only one year in the last 65 years when no British soldier has died on active service. We remember those who continue to die fighting today, and rightly so. But the numbers, a few thousand over the past decade, are dwarfed by previous slaughters, especially the First World War. With half the population of today, over five million British men were called up in the First World War. 1,200,000 soldiers on both sides died in the one battle of the Somme alone. On the first day of the battle, on 1st June 1916, 29,000 British soldiers died, most of them in the first two hours. There have never been so many deaths in battles between soldiers. |
| We should always remember. And we should always try to place these experiences, these memories, in the context of our Christian faith as we gather here to remember this Sunday and every Sunday in remembrance of the last supper of our Lord before he was tried before Pilate, and killed by Roman soldiers. |
| I have recently been reading Antony Beevor’s book D Day about the battle for Normandy. It is the third of his huge military histories of the Second World War, following the battles for Stalingrad and Berlin. What struck me most was the huge differences between all previous wars and the Second World War. Although the casualties in previous wars were vast, they were overwhelmingly of serving soldiers killed in battles between armies. In the Second Wold War more civilians died than soldiers, in bombings, concentration camps, executions. Tens of thousands of civilians died in Stalingrad, while hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of German women were systematically raped as the red army advanced to Berlin through East Germany. |
| I was five when the British, American, and Canadian armies landed in Normandy and began the advance that ended in Germany with the defeat of Hitler. I remember being taught that it was a heroic battle. Landings from sea; parachutists; aid from the French resistance; tank battles, river crossings; final triumph. All true. |
| Yet I do not remember hearing or reading about the horrendous French casualties, as allied bombers rained bombs and shells on French towns and cities to try to clear them of German troops, and ease the passage of allied armies. Thousands of French, mostly, labourers, farm workers, housewives, and children died, and their homes and workplaces and farms and schools and hospitals and churches were destroyed. It took decades to recover and rebuild. |
| The illustration of the extent of damage that stayed in my mind was that when George Patton, the famous American general and tank commander, flew over Normandy a few weeks after the landing. The pilot flew at 300 hundred feet over the fields and Patton was almost sick as a result of the overwhelming stench from dead farm animals in the fields below. Warfare had become so total that thousands of cows also paid the ultimate price. And in the years since the trend has continued. British and other troops have fought in many set-piece battles between armies but in guerrilla warfare, civil wars, peace keeping between rival factions. And armed soldiers, insurgents, terrorists, call them what you will now make virtually no distinction between soldiers and civilians, men or women, adults or children. All are seen as legitimate targets. |
| So as today we remember the dead soldiers, of our, and every nation, who have died in previous wars, it behoves us to remember the differences as well as the similarities between armed conflicts then and now. We must also consider any present or future conflicts in the light of the new circumstances of armed struggles so that we do not turn to armed responses on the basis of false parallels to very different ages and very different kinds of warfare. It makes our Christian duty as peacemakers no less urgent and important, but even more complex than it has been in the past. |
| Rest eternal grant all those who have died in violence and may they rest in peace and rise in glory. Amen. |
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