Reepham Benefice

“I would like to begin, first of all, just by expressing something which I am sure that all of us feel, and that is how glad we are that the children and young people have come here this morning in such large numbers. It makes a huge difference to the adults here, many of whom recall the second world war, that you are here and have taken the trouble to come out to church this morning.

The first Remembrance Day service that I took part in was about 40 years or so ago, dare I say it, and I remember the feeling at that time when I was a young curate that this whole thing of Remembrance Sunday will probably last another 10 or 15 years or so and then it will probably be put aside and not remember after that. How wrong that has been. Because actually there seems to be an even greater emphasis on Remembrance Sunday these days than there was even in those days.

But what has changed is that now there is now a far greater interest and emphasis in the 1st World War than there was at that time. That is no doubt because the Second World War which was then so recent sort of eclipsed the first world war, we didn’t really think about it, and we didn’t really know very much about it. Many of us will remember the films that came out after the 2nd World War, like In Which We Serve, The Cruel Sea... All of those things which reminded us of the war and of the fact that it was all over and of the fact that we had won it. And When I joined the Royal Naval College Dartmouth about 13 years or so after the end of the 2nd World War, one felt at the time that one was part of a great tradition but I doubt very much really whether we fully understood or comprehended that what we were getting ourselves into was just the possibility that we too might be involved in a similar kind of conflict in the future, although...