From Oosterbeek to Manchester, We Will Remember Them

A Voice at the Lectern

This morning, I was honoured to take the Second Reading, I Thessalonians 4:13-18, at the Remembrance Sunday service at Manchester Cathedral. It could have been a daunting task; my voice is still affected over two years after radiotherapy, and there is the almost terror of hearing your own voice amplified in the cathedral nave, something that has the capacity to leave you tongue-tied in nervous fright.

There were probably a few hiccups, but I am glad that people still came to commend me for my reading. Yet there is more to this occasion than my standing at the lectern in traditional garb, which someone suggested looked quite regal.

Connections Near and Far

An uncle, the husband of my mother's baby sister, was in the Nigerian Army. He may well have fought in the Nigerian Civil War, but no one sat us down to tell stories of war, triumph, or human suffering. We were in England then, and the most I learnt of the Civil War came from the photojournalism of Peter Obe, compiled in his photobook, "Nigeria: A Decade of Crises in Pictures".

In the 1990s, my partner had close family ties to the Second World War. His maternal grandfather was part of Operation Market Garden in the Netherlands. He died in combat and is buried in the Arnhem Oosterbeek War Cemetery.

An AI-generated infographic on the blog content. (Click to enlarge.)

His mother was born on the day her father was declared missing. For years, I would meet his grandmother in Arnhem when the family came over for the memorial services in late September. Built into my psyche were the words, "We will remember them."

A Tradition Kept

Even after we broke up, we remained friends, as we are to this day. I did have a close attachment to his family, and for the friendship we had developed, I was invited to, and did attend, the obsequies for his grandmother, a dear woman of such strength and character, independent to a fault, with a resolution forged out of the tragedy of war.

My friend would come over to the Netherlands when I lived there to continue the tradition his grandmother had observed for some 35 years. There was one time when he invited me to Oosterbeek to visit his grandfather's grave with him. It was a solemn and moving occasion, and I was already in such pain that it presaged my hospital admission barely a month later.

Before the White Headstone

We stood before the grave and read the inscription to a young man of 29 who had a wife, a boy, and a newly born daughter, as well as parents, all of whom would have been waiting for his safe return home. War rips lives apart and tears hearts out. Man's inability to find reconciliation without the shedding of blood, much of it innocent, is exemplified in that white headstone, and in the hundreds or thousands crowded out of view by the cynosure of what brought us there.

Then my friend became emotional. He promised me this had never happened to him before, but in that moment there was a different kind of reckoning: memories and connections to a man from whom he descended, yet who had died over 25 years before he was born.

The Weight of Remembering

This memory is why I appreciate the weight of responsibility and circumstance; to remember, to acknowledge, and to honour those sent into battle to help the greater minds in power come to some sort of compromise to end all hostilities.

I am a pacifist, and yet I do see circumstances where aggression must be met with force, though I am ambivalent, if not trenchant, about how young blood is sacrificed to the ends of men, accepting that resolution cannot come at the shooting of guns but at the meeting of minds.

Blood That Cries Out

As a person of faith, I also think about how much innocent blood has been shed in many lands, and who, in the eternal scheme of things, should have been held accountable for these crimes against humanity. Like the blood of Abel, I believe the blood of the many, shed and spilt to the ground, cries out to heaven for vengeance and justice.

The wrath that awaits some leaders who have initiated war will be unimaginable. This abominable tragedy unleashed on the earth, even into the present, cannot go without divine retribution of eternal consequence.

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.

Excerpt from For the Fallen - By Laurence Binyon

A Gemini Notebook AI Podcast on this blog