Dear Reader,
It seems such a short time since last year's Remembrance Sunday service, so different from this year with the restrictions on gatherings. But Francis found out that he was allowed to play the pipes on the Playing Close by the Memorial today, and looking marvelous in the Cameron kilt and black jacket with silver buttons, we kept the two minutes silence and then he played 'The Hills of Tyrol', and two other well known pieces.
Every year on Remembrance Sunday I think of my father. He served in the Royal Army Service Corps and was mentioned in Dispatches on three occasions. He never mentioned his war memories but was ill from the gas he inhaled all his life.
As always, thank you Dad for the small part you played in allowing me to live in freedom. Thinking of you and sending love.
From D.H Lawrence, 1915 Oxfordshire
'When I drive across this country, with autumn falling and rustling to pieces, I am so sad, for my country, for this great wave of civilisation, 2000 years, which is now collapsing, that it is hard to live. So much beauty and pathos of old things passing away and no new things coming.......the past, the great past, crumbling down, breaking down, not under the force of the coming birds, but under the weight of many exhausted lovely yellow leaves, that drift over the lawn, and over the pond, like the soldiers, passing away, into winter and the darkness of winter - no, I can't bear it. For the winter stretches ahead, where all vision is lost and all memory dies out'.
*
Thanks, Private Norfolk
You left singing, with your pals
marching for good and glory.
You hadn't yet dug a trench
killed an unknown soldier,
seen dead bodies, smelt their stench,
heard comrades' last sickening cries.
You gave your life with generous heart,
believed the lies
dispatched by loftier ranks.
So to you, dear Private Norfolk,
I give my salute,
and my deepest thanks
for swapping your mauve rain-skies,
your white-breast beaches, and beckoning sea
your level fields of ripening corn,
to fight in foreign fields, for us,
for me
*
With very best wishes, Patricia
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