Remembrance is just as important as it ever was

Are we Brits too concerned about Remembrance? This question is pertinent as we experience Remembrance weekend. Yesterday we marked Armistice Day with a two-minute silence. Tomorrow there will be the traditional National Service of Remembrance at the Cenotaph in London, attended by the King and Queen, as well as other members of the Royal family and chiefs of the Armed Forces.

The tragedies of battle are such that, after the slaughter in the First World War, it was said that every family in Britain suffered a grievous loss: the death or life-changing wounds of a husband, son, uncle, nephew or cousin. However, even with something approaching one million deaths of Commonwealth citizens in the four years of war, it did seem an exaggerated claim.

Now I’m not so sure. On a four-day trip to Flanders with two friends, we realised just how near the truth that old maxim is. I discovered where my great uncle died and my travelling companion found the gravestone of his wife’s great uncle. They were only a few miles apart when their lives were ended but there was a year and a host of battles between each of their deaths. And incredibly to my mind, but probably not to seasoned students of the Great War, they were both from the same regiment – the Seaforth Highlanders.

Is there something mawkish in our decision to seek out these last resting places? Poppies, the outward symbol of Britain’s salute to the sacrifice of our Armed Forces in all conflicts, are everywhere at this time of year. Almost all of the tributes laid at the Cenotaph are made up of these flowers, which were first made symbolic by the Canadian soldier-poet John Mccrae, who wrote the famous lines: “In Flanders fields the poppies blow/ Between the graves, row on row.”

If the question is whether any of it means anything today, the answer is yes, it does – not just here in Britain,

There is nothing mawkish in learning about those who sacrificed their lives for the freedoms we take for granted today

but to much of the Commonwealth and mainland Europe. Thousands will have attended the ceremonies at the Menin Gate in Ypres, Belgium, at 8pm every night this week and, indeed, every night, every week, every month and every year since 1928.

A group of expert buglers, drawn from the ranks of the local Belgian voluntary fire service, sound The Last Post beneath the arches of a monument which bears the names of some 54,000 British and Commonwealth servicemen for whom there is no known grave but who died between 1914 and 1918. Included in the thousands of visitors looking on will be hundreds of young people and schoolchildren.

My grandfather’s youngest brother, Pte David Roddie, was in the 5th Battalion, Seaforth Highlanders, one of Kitchener’s voluntary New Army units, formed to make good the slaughter of the regular Army 12 months before. On September 25, 1915 he was killed along with thousands of others. I can only imagine his terror; it was the first time that the British had used poison gas and it blew back on the British lines, killing more British than German soldiers according to some reports. He was just one of 58,000 casualties, killed, wounded or missing.

He has no known grave; his name is merely listed amongst 20,000 others, in strict alphabetical order, on massive wall panels overlooking the cemetery.

One year before Pte Roddie’s death, Captain DG Methven, of the 2nd Battalion, Seaforth Highlanders, was killed at Houplines, a village 13 miles from the Menin Gate in northern France. He was the great uncle of my friend’s wife. Unlike my relative, Captain Methven appears to have been an officer in the regular Army, which had been almost decimated in the bloodbath of the war’s early months.

Was the discovery of the last resting places of long lost relatives the reason why we and so many others care about Remembrance? Or is the answer more simple: Lest We Forget.