We remember them.. but we’ll never understand

ON a bright winter’s morning under a blue sky, we stood for the 11th hour of the 11th day, around a simple war memorial.

A shadow from the pointed obelisk on which the names of the war dead are inscribed slanted over the grass.

There must have been at least 60 people gathered for the short service of remembrance, the first for two years because of the pandemic.

Wreaths were laid by elderly ladies, who, I suspect, had lost loved ones, and by a young boy and girl together. Then came the small wooden crosses.

Events like this were being played out across the country. It’s only in recent years that I’ve begun to attend my local commemoration. I’m a war baby. My father was in the RAF during WW2, his big brother Jack in the Guards and little brother Bob, the pit deputy, a tail gunner in Lancasters, and even my Auntie Barbara did her bit.

A couple of days earlier, I had been searching Moorthorpe cemetery after spotting a Commonwealth War Graves sign on the gate.

The graves are easily identified, all being the same shape and size, but they all tell different stories. Two are from WW1, Seaforth Highlander Private A Carlile and

Rifleman JG Hazelhurst, who died of their wounds after hostilities ceased.

From WW2, there is a Canadian RAF leading aircraftman, gunners, drivers, a flight engineer, a pilot and members of the RASC, all united in death. Most poignant, to my mind, was the grave of Pte Sarah Tye, of South Elmsall, a volunteer in the Voluntary Aid Detachment of nurses, who died aged 34 in August 1944.

Her inscription reads: Some Day We Shall Understand. If only, Sarah, if only.