Remembering
A sermon preached by the Revd Canon Dr Alison Joyce
on Remembrance Sunday, 8th November 2009
In the name of the living God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Leaving aside the Bible for a moment, there is, for me, one work of literature that, in terms of its greatness, simply towers above just about everything else that has ever been written. It comes from a world and a culture that is very different from our own, in almost every respect. And yet its subject matter concerns things that are utterly timeless in human life: because its themes are those of pride; rage; love; death; bereavement; heroism; guilt; vengeance; emotional torment; and reconciliation.
And the story that it tells is set against the background of a terrible war (which is why, as we shall see in a moment, all this is of direct relevance to our service this morning) – although the war that it describes took place many centuries ago: it was a war between the mighty armies of Greece and Troy. I am, of course, describing one of the most ancient works of literature ever written – the Greek epic poem traditionally ascribed to the poet, Homer, entitled The Iliad.
Now, I would be the first person to admit that The Iliad is not an easy read. Far from it. Indeed, I doubt that I would ever have managed to plough my way through it myself, had I not been obliged to do so when studying it as an undergraduate. I can particularly remember struggling with its interminable battle scenes, and the endless very succinct, but unbelievably detailed, accounts of individual heroes locked in hand-to-hand combat, which go on for page, after page, after page.
Except that one day, while I was wading my way through one of Homer’s inordinately lengthy battle scenes, suddenly and quite unexpectedly the penny dropped; and I realised with a jolt that, in the midst of all of these endless and detailed accounts of blood and carnage, something really quite astonishing was going on. Something that I have never seen replicated in any other literary account of war before or since; and, indeed, however radically the nature of warfare may have changed in the interim, because of the way in which he tells his story, Homer manages to nail a truth about the reality of war that remains every bit as relevant today, as it was when The Iliad was first written down.
Because there are two very notable and rather unusual features of Homer’s description of battle. Firstly, at a very general level, he is surprisingly even-handed in the way in which he describes the two warring sides: this is not a simplistic tale of good guys fighting bad guys; far from it: like all the most profound and timeless works of literature, the tale that it tells is very far from being ‘black and white’ in moral terms: there are men of courage and there is human frailty on both sides; and one glimpses the impact of tragic loss for all, regardless of who they are fighting for. Because what Homer is interested in is something that goes much, much deeper, than a boy’s adventure story.
But the most important thing of all, strangely enough, is directly connected with all those endless, very short, but highly detailed accounts of hand-to-hand combat – dozens and dozens and dozens of them. Let me read you one of them very briefly, an episode that I have picked pretty much at random. Here, the Trojans are in retreat against the Greek onslaught; but then the Trojan warrior, Glaukos turns back and confronts the Greek hero Bathykles:
But Glaukos was first …
to turn again, and killed Bathykles the great-hearted, beloved
son of Chalkon, who had dwelled in his home in Hellas,
conspicuous for wealth and success among all the Myrmidons.
It was he whom Glaukos stabbed in the middle of the chest, turning
suddenly back with his spear as he overtook him. He fell,
thunderously, and the closing sorrow came over the Achaians
as the great man went down.
You see, it suddenly dawned on me that here, in this short incident, and in dozens like it, we experience something that is far more significant than merely a soldier on one side killing an opponent: on the contrary, the men we glimpse in these brief episodes are named individuals, who have identities; who have personalities; who have stories; who have relationships. In this fleeting little passage we learn that Bathykles is a great-hearted man; he has a father who loves him dearly, who is himself named - Chalkon; his family is wealthy and successful; and his loss is mourned terribly by the men on his side. We also learn the precise details of how he died. Homer tells us all this about a man who does not appear anywhere else in the story apart from this one little incident. And why does he do it?
Because by doing so he takes his readers straight to the very heart of the tragic reality of war, by the simple device of describing its death and destruction through the individual stories of the men caught up in it. That is why his battle scenes take so long, and can seem so unnecessarily detailed: his warriors are real human beings, with identities, with personalities, with stories, with relationships; in the Iliad, every single individual who falls in battle is an individual human tragedy, leaving behind a grieving family; a stricken parent; a desolate wife. For Homer, the true tragedy of war resides, not in its scale, but in its human cost at the level of every single human being caught up in it.
And, in the same way, I have a very clear sense that the most important thing that I do during this service of Remembrance each year, is to read aloud the names on our war memorial. They are, of course, not the only people to have died during the course of those two World Wars; nor are they, in all probability, the most significant. But they are ‘ours’; and, in hearing those names read aloud, every one of which represents an individual human tragedy, we suddenly find ourselves confronted in a particularly poignant way by the true reality of war, and the true cost of war. The story of a war – any war – whether it be the Trojan war of Bronze Age Greece, or the American Civil War of Walt Whitman’s day, or the Two World Wars of the last century, or the insurgency in Afghanistan in the present day – the one thing that all these have in common is that they are all made up of individual human tragedies; and when we read the names of those individuals each Remembrance Sunday we are reminded of that difficult but inescapable fact. And in these days when so much in life is governed by statistics and number-crunching, we would perhaps do well to keep that in focus.
But what of all those individuals listed on our war memorial, whose names I read out a few moments ago? What of their stories? Let me tell you about one or two of them.
Major R.M. Owen, of the 52nd Light Infantry, Oxford and Bucks, was killed in action in the summer of 1916. Reggie Owen was the son of the Vicar here, Charles Mansfield Owen, who at the time of his son’s death had only recently left this church to take up a new post as Dean of Ripon Cathedral. Reggie had been a pupil at West House School, just down the road from here, and subsequently Cheltenham College. On the battlefield he was mentioned in despatches for gallantry. He was twenty-five years old when he was killed in action. You may be interested to know that Charles Mansfield Owen also had another son, Basil, who later became a Commander in the Royal Navy, and who, believe it or not, died during the Second World War, a year after his father’s death.
And what of the other names that I read out? As some of you will know already, our war memorial is unusual, if not unique, in having a woman recorded on it: Eveline Fidgeon Shaw (E.F. Shaw), who was an ambulance driver with the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, during the First World War, working with the French Red Cross. She died on 24th August 1918. Her family lived at a house round the corner from here in Priory Road. She was honoured by the French Government, and awarded the Croix de Guerre (with palm). The official citation described her as:
A volunteer driver of devotion and courage beyond all praise. She exerted herself selflessly, completely disdaining danger and fatigue, whilst carrying out evacuations, often in difficult circumstances and under enemy air attacks. She died as a result of a contagion illness contracted in the course of duty.
And what of those who lost their lives during the Second World War? You cannot have failed to notice that three of the young men whose names I read out shared a surname: Danielsen. Let me tell you a little about them, and about their families.
Throughout the whole of the Second World War, the two Churchwardens of this parish were Col. F.G. Danielsen of 48 Farquhar Road, and Col. J.W. Danielsen, of 47 Wellington Road. The second of these, J.W. Danielsen had three sons: the younger two, Peter and Christopher, were RAF pilots, who were both killed in action. His remaining son, Bob, was taken prisoner, and was eventually released in April 1945. Tragically, Colonel Danielsen not only lost two of his sons during the Second World War, he also had to endure the untimely death of his wife of 32 years, Lillian, who died in 1943.
The other Churchwarden, Colonel Fred Danielsen, had only one son, George; an extraordinarily gifted young man, who was married and had a young family, and had recently been awarded the MBE. Major George Christian Danielsen was killed in action in the Middle East in 1943.
How could a single family bear such grief and such sadness; such a terrible waste of young life? And yet, that is the tragedy and that is the reality of war. A few moments ago I described an incident from the Trojan War, a war that took place many centuries ago. Earlier in this service I read a poem from the American Civil War. The stories I have just recounted have taken place in the modern era, during the First and Second World Wars, just about within living memory. War is a terrible reality of human life. It always has been, and it always will be.
Which is why it is so very important that we do our remembering. There are some of you here this morning who know far more than I do about the reality and the horror of war. Who know what it is like to lose friends, and comrades, and family members; and who know how important it is that their names are never forgotten. But it is every bit as important that the post-war generations such as my own, do our ‘remembering’. Because we must never be allowed to forget the horror and the barbarity of war, and the individual tragedies of which it comprises.
Remembering matters. In a few moments’ time the choir will sing an anthem, the words of which you will find on your bulletin sheet. They are words that date from the 5th Century BC, and are also from Classical Greece; and they are every bit as timeless in their sentiment as the words of Homer. They are the words of a funeral oration for the fallen, by the Greek General and Statesman, Pericles of Athens. And his words remind us, that even when memories do eventually fade, and there are those whose names we can no longer remember, nevertheless their story lives on:
So they gave their bodies to the commonwealth
and received praise that will never die,
and a home in the minds of men.
Their story lives on, without visible symbol,
woven into the stuff of other men’s lives.
So they gave their bodies to the commonwealth,
and received praise that will never die,
that will never, never, never die.
Amen.