Page 6 - Moravian Messenger November 2019

Remembrance
When the Armistice was declared for the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month we seemed to be left with the strange impression that death and sorrow stopped as if by the stroke of a pen; that an end was brought to the suffering. We remember at annual services the dead of the First and Second World Wars and later conflicts but how often do we consider or remember the families of those who died in these conflicts?
In reality there have been no years that families have not suffered loss or on-going sorrow. We seem to remember only the dead after these events and not consider those who lived on carrying their sorrow and grief for many years after the fighting had effectively ceased. After conflicts we should consider that the living need our remembrance just as much as the dead now safely in God's Care. Private Thomas Dann, commemorated on the War memorial at Ely, was recorded as 'missing in action' on the 12th April 1918. His mother, hoping against hope that he was still alive, never went to bed before the last train came into Ely station even for a period after she had been officially informed of his death in May 1919. The brief note merely said it was presumed he had died on the day he went missing. All the months of waiting and hoping now had to come to a final acceptance that her only child had been lost in the man-made inferno of the Western Front.
The letters from comrades of those killed paint a sad picture of the men under constant threat of death writing words of comfort - 'he was killed instantly' or 'killed outright' no doubt as a means of consolation to the families who had received the dreaded telegram from the military authorities. They tragically, frequently knew that the truth was different, but they wrote to ease the pain of the living in remembering the dead. Bessie Hudson received such a letter from her husband's Padre in 1917 who ended his correspondence with 'may God in his mercy comfort you on your trouble - will you let me know the names of your three children so I might help them'. The reality of her situation is starkly noted when we read his postscript: 'whoever buries his body will forward the contents of his pockets, of course at present burying is impossible, as it would risk lives'. Mrs Hudson was now a widow with three young children and as her husband had been a jobbing gardener, she faced years of financial hardship in raising her family. She also lacked the comfort that a final decent resting place for her husband would have given her as his initial grave was lost as the ground was fought and re-fought over. His name is now one of the many with no known graves recorded on the wall of the Tyne Cot Memorial in Belgium.
After the war families were allowed to put an inscription on the headstones in the cemeteries that flowed like white frozen grief across the fields of Flanders and indeed the world. The charge was three and a half pence per letter which at the time made it expensive for poor families. It says much for the 'land fit for heroes' that this was the case for many. This led to some controversy with the New Zealand government forbidding any inscription while Canada paid for all the words on the headstones of her fallen. Surprisingly only 20% of headstones have any inscriptions from the families of the deceased. Perhaps it was
that memories were still too raw and painful and the grave far away. However, time might have been a factor as it was well into the 1920's before the work was nearing completion on the cemeteries.
The few words at the base of some headstones tell some harrowing stories which reflect what the families must have suffered over many years. Carved into one at the request of his mother is 'Age 17 years, 1 month, 10 days - in thy keeping Our Father'. The young gunner Harold Goring had got around the age regulations by persuading his grandmother to be listed as next of kin and thus hiding his real age and avoiding his mother's opposition to his enlistment. It is not recorded how long his mother and grandmother lived after his death in 1917 but we can scarcely comprehend how they must have felt as the years passed away robbing them of their boy growing into manhood.
Many of the inscriptions derive from Biblical quotations. One is 'they thought to understand this but it was too hard for me', lines from Psalm 73 in the Book of Common Prayer. These lines were chosen by the father of Thomas Little and it is not clear if it is his parents' sense of loss or a criticism of the waste of a whole generation in the war. From the initial news of his son's death Thomas Little's father and family had some time of contemplation before the note was sent for the inscription to be carved. Did their remembrance change from 'he had done his duty', which was a very common carving, to reflecting on the utter waste of war?
Would remembrance ease the anguish of Mrs Seabrook who had three sons killed on two consecutive days in Sept 1917. Her chosen words were: 'A willing sacrifice for the World's Peace' but if she had lived for just over another twenty years would she have felt the same as the cloud's gathered for the Second World War exposing the fallacy of the 'war to end all wars'. Mrs Lucas of Manchester lost her son Ernest on 1st July 1916 - the worst day in the history of the British Army and later in 1917 her other son Albert. Her husband died in 1920 and it was left to her to write the lines to be carved on Ernest's headstone: 'United with his father and brother Bert - MY All Gone'.
It is hard to tell how many used their faith to sustain them over this period as we can only try to comprehend how they were expressing their sorrow for the dead as inscriptions range from lines of popular hymns and the Bible to parts of the music hall songs of the time, perhaps bringing back memories of happier times. 11th November commemorates the end of hostilities on the Western Front, but the war did not end in Iraq, Russia, the Baltic States or indeed Ireland. Another war still continued in the hospital wards; 500 died in France alone on the 12th November; in private homes and mental institutions the wounded and mentally scarred still passed away from the effects of the war.
The great 'Spanish Flu' epidemic claimed many. Recorded on the Ely war memorial with dates long after hostilities had ceased are men weakened by wounds and infections who had little resistance when they contacted the virus in 1918 and on into
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© Gary Blakeley