By Revd Preb Nigel Guthrie
My father, David, would never attend Remembrance Sunday services. They were too painful for him. When he was eighteen he lost the brother who was closest to him. Alexander was two years older and he joined up with the RAF in about 1940. He was a Sergeant Radio Observer and was killed at the age of 20 when his plane went down over the Midlands in 1942. My grandparents were heartbroken, as so many parents must have been during those war years. But, as was also the case in those days, the loss was hardly spoken about. I suppose people felt that such a sacrifice should be borne with a quiet dignity.
Although my father wanted to join the RAF to ‘replace’ Alex, he had to complete his engineering apprenticeship during the war years and he only joined up in 1946, serving for two years before being ‘demobbed’. I suppose if he had have joined up earlier I might not have been here, given the life expectancy of airmen in the Second World War! But the loss of his dearest brother haunted him for the rest of his life.
The reverberations of war continue down the generations. What people and opportunities were lost from this country alone due to the two great wars? And what of the future for the many Ukrainian, and indeed Russian, families who have lost young people due to the current conflict and of the families bereaved in the continued conflicts of the Middle East, Sudan and elsewhere?
In the King James Version of the Prophet Isaiah we read “And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”
As we keep VE day in this coming week our first intention must be to pray for peace that God desires. But even after 80 years it is right that we should remember the lives that were lost in all sides during the Second World War, and the pain that was suffered by the injured and bereaved. It is right that we should give thanks for the courage and sacrifice of those who served. And we should resolve never to take our freedoms for granted, or the peace which many of us have enjoyed during the post-war years. It was bought at a high price.