We must reflect with gratitude and pride

Sir, – A hundred years ago at 5am – on the morning of November 11 1918 – an armistice was signed in a railway carriage parked in a French forest near the front lines and hostilities were stopped on the entire front at precisely 11am.

Minds were numbed by the shock of peace after four years of unimaginably bloody conflict, little knowing that barely 21 years later, another ghastly conflict would engulf the world with all its horrors.

The men who fought in the trenches would go on to see their sons called upon to defend our nation, this time against the evils of Nazism and the merciless Imperialism of Japan.

It is almost impossible now to imagine what the people of our nation felt when war again became inevitable, particularly with the devastating and bitter memories of the First World War, but without doubt at that time uncommon courage, perseverance and fortitude were to become common virtues.

However, it is for the men who gave their lives that we give remembrance.

Of all the noble qualities that can be attributed to the fallen it is for sacrifice that these men should be honoured.

Robert Leckie, a Second World War US marine, wrote: “It is to sacrifice that men go to war. They do not go to kill, they go to be killed, to risk their flesh by inserting their precious persons in the path of destruction and evil... sacrifice is eternal.”

On Armistice Day we should reflect on these words and think of those who made the ultimate sacrifice with gratitude and pride.

Iain G Richmond. Guildy House, Monikie.

PA. Poppies attached to puttees, leg wrappings worn by soldiers during World War 1, hang down in the Morning Chapel inside Salisbury Cathedral.