Here in the UK this coming weekend sees our annual Remembrance Sunday, the day on which we remember and thank those who made the ultimate sacrifice to protect our freedom. I have posted for this every year since I started this blog: it is an important occasion for which I always want to mark my respect. In previous years I have told you of local events, of the forebears of my football team who went off to join up for WW1, and have shared poetry like the one above. I have played music to mark the event and that is what I did last year. I liked the way they came out and, on the assumption that you won’t remember what I played, I’m going with them again today in an edited version of last year’s offering.

Last year, all but one of those I played was here for the first time, though another had appeared in a different version. My selection took you through the human aspects of war, and how it has been represented in song. I am particularly fond of songs that tell a story, and these do that very well – hence my going round again.

At the beginning of a war, there is usually a popular patriotic fervour, and this was true of 1939 when WW2 began. One of my favourite singer-songwriters has a song which tells of that time, of the emotions that young soldiers were going through, and the apprehension they felt about going into the unknown. The sound quality on the video isn’t great but it is the only live performance I could find, and all the studio versions were heavily restricted:

Optimism, hope and fear captured by Ralph McTell in the three minutes of the Maginot Waltz. For those unaware of the background, the Maginot Line was a set of concrete fortifications built by France in the 1920s as a defence against a repeat of the German invasions of WW1, though Ralph actually sets his song as being at the start of WW1 – poetic licence, I think. History tells us that the German army simply went round the defences by invading Belgium instead, and making their way across France from there. Many British soldiers, and those of other countries, would have felt the same emotions as the protagonist in the song.

Once the newly recruited soldiers arrived on the battlefield, the horrors of war became immediately apparent. This next song describes how this went for a group who joined up for WW1. They were known colloquially as the Accrington Pals, which is one of the best remembered of the battalions raised in the early months of the First World War in response to Field Marshal Lord Kitchener’s call for a volunteer army. Groups of friends from all walks of life in Accrington and its neighbouring Lancashire towns enlisted together, to form a battalion with a distinctively local identity. They went through a range of training at various UK locations until they first saw active service, in which they suffered devastating losses in the attack on Serre on 1st July 1916, the opening day of the Battle of the Somme. The losses were hard to bear in a community where nearly everyone had a relative or friend who had been killed or wounded. Other battalions of ‘Pals’ were recruited in similar fashion, with their deep local identities. The wonderful Mike Harding tells the Accrington story:

This wasn’t just a British thing. Another story of WW1 was told from an Australian perspective, this time focussing on how it felt to be a disabled survivor of battle. This is Eric Bogle at his very best:

Sadly, people like the one described in that song are often left to endure a lonely existence, ignored by society and questioning ‘why me?’ I grew up in the aftermath of WW2 and there were a few like that in my town, to give us a constant reminder. I was born eight years after WW2 ended, in Dover, which had borne the brunt of Hitler’s bombing raids – so much so that it became known colloquially as ‘Hellfire Corner.’ The physical remembrances of that were everywhere, as the town underwent a huge programme of reconstruction, and the human effects were also notable. You learn a lot about war at a young age when you see that.

Taking a slight deviation from music, the horrors of war – again from a WW1 setting – have never been better displayed than in the final scene of the Blackadder TV show. It was a comedy, and there are elements of that in this clip, but for me they just make it even more poignant:

After the war is over there is the beginning of the desire to pay the country’s respects to those who fought. Remembrance Sunday is our way of doing that in the UK, marking Armistice Day at the end of WW1, when the guns were to fall silent after peace had been agreed, this taking place at the eleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month: 11am on the 11th of November 1918. One of the most significant reminders is the Unknown Warrior, an unidentified member of the UK forces who died on the western front during WW1. He was interred in a grave at Westminster Abbey after being given a state funeral on 11 November 1920, simultaneously with a similar interment of a French unknown soldier at the Arc de Triomphe in France. The British soldier had been chosen from those originally interred in France and was brought back to England for the ceremonial burial. I shared the song by Ralph McTell about this in 2023 and again last year, but I make no apologies for giving it another airing: I think it is worth being reprised.

The Unknown Soldier was first released as the lead track (of four) on an EP in 2014, to commemorate the centenary of the start of WW1, and this accompanying video features narration by Sir Billy Connolly, Sir Anthony Hopkins, and Liam Neeson. It was re-released in 2022: as Ralph says in the postscript, it is a bit of an epic, but it tells a story that may not be well known now after the passing of 105 years. All proceeds from sales of the record were donated to the Royal British Legion, the leading UK charity providing support for veterans. That story deserves to be remembered, and this is a fitting way to do it:

As is my custom I will be watching on TV on Sunday morning when the BBC does its usual excellent job of showing the ceremony at the Cenotaph in London, followed by the parade of veterans and current serving forces members, with ever dwindling numbers of participants from WW2. The most moving part of the event for me is always this, and I imagine it will evoke the usual feelings for me. This is from the 2011 ceremony, but it always does it for me:

That was, of course, Sir Edward Elgar’s Nimrod The Hunter from his Enigma Variations, still to me a beautiful tune which offers a perfect moment during which we can reflect.

Unfortunately, the human race fails to learn the lessons of history, as evidenced by current conflicts and, no doubt, those which are yet to come. War is pointless. Apart from arms manufacturers and the tyrannies of dictators and wannabe dictators no one ever really wins, and so many lose: their homes, their lands, and their lives. Sunday should be a lesson to us all never to forget that, and just maybe we could prevent some future waste of lives. You may say I’m a dreamer…