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Saturday, 12 November 2011

REMEMBRANCE DAY

SUNDAY 13th NOVEMBER 2011

Today in church services across the world and at war memorials soldiers who have died in the service of their country will be remembered - as they were on Friday (which was the actual anniversary of the first armistice day in 1918.  Please take a moment to remember those members of our own family and those who were related to us who died in two World Wars.  Spare a thought also for all other service men and women who have died, and who are still dying in other conflicts

Please remember :

Gunner Herbert Bayliss : died 2nd November 1918
Private Kenneth Ernest Booth : died 20th Sepyember 1944
Lance Corporal Walter Huggins : died 28th November 1916
Private Amos Herbert Catt : died 7th October 1916
Private Frederick Hinkley : died 4th November 1918.



Ode of Remembrance
by
Laurence Binyon

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, 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.


They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.


THE SOLDIER
by
Rupert Brooke


If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blessed by the suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts a peace, under an English heaven.

Herbert Bayliss is remembered on the Islington War Memorial
in Finchley Cemetery

3 comments:

  1. Nice to see those poems in full again, thanks Ernest.

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  2. Such lovely postings and photos. Ernest you are a very special person doing this for all of us. I have just looked at your new header photo and wonder if Arthur is in the third row from the front,fourth soldier in from the left?

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