With three towns in Wyre Forest and many local churches, it was always going to be a challenge to know which Remembrance Sunday service to attend. Years ago I decided to rotate through each town on a three yearly cycle. However, this year I considered breaking the cycle and going to Northamptonshire to join the Remembrance commemorations at the church where my grandfather’s brother is remembered on the hundredth anniversary of his death. In the end, I went to Bewdley –I think it is more important to be part of an act of remembrance alongside the community I represent.
I’m not sure that there is a family in the country that can’t trace an ancestor that has made the ultimate sacrifice. In the case of my great uncle, Denys Garnier, we are very much aware of his short life. We still have his photograph albums from the Great War and before, his medals, his hair brushes, his suitcase – all sorts of things that bring life to an individual who died so long ago. He served in the Second Battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment and their archives tell us that he was wounded whilst leading a patrol in Mesopotamia in December 1916. He was taken to a hospital in Greece and died in January 1917. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission, who maintain all war graves, told us the exact plot where he is buried in Greece.
The school where both he and I went lost a remarkable number of pupils in the Great War, and a memorial chapel was built to commemorate those losses. Since then the panels of names have been added to with subsequent wars, but on a recent visit I was shocked to see an name in 2003 in (I think) Afghanistan.
When I was younger, I didn’t particularly understand the emotion of remembrance. But as I get older, I find myself overwhelmed with a sense of loss to those lives and opportunities, and maybe families, that never happened because of war. We are remembering the centenaries of lives lost, but the truth is that we see more names added most years ever since 1918. That is why it is so incredibly important that we remember not just people like my great uncle, but people who have died recently. It is a great tragedy that the need for an act of remembrance is refreshed every year with new losses.