Rembrance Sunday.
Always such a sombre day, made more poignant this year, being one hundred years since the armistice. In my childhood there were still men maimed and crippled in “The Great War” to be seen on the streets of London, so to me that awful conflict is still within living memory. The huge grief that settled on the shoulders of the British people from this event can be measured by the war memorials to be found in every city, town and village in the land, except for the thirty two “fortunate villages” that lost no-one in the First World War. Thousands upon thousands of clusters of human dwellings, large and small, from the largest city to the smallest hamlet, each has it’s own memorial. Just outside Liilieshall in Shropshire, on a bend on the Edgmond Road, where there are perhaps a handful of dwellings, there also is a war memorial.
In Whitchurch on this day there was a good turnout of about five hundred to witness the annual wreath laying ceremony at our immaculately maintained war memorial. After the last post was sounded the parade moved off to our parish church, St Alkmunds. Marching in good order the Army Cadets, the Royal Air Force Cadets, the Boy Scouts, the Cubs, the Girl Guides and the Brownies, various other youth groups followed by civic dignitaries. Such a great effort.