REMEMBRANCE

We watched the Royal British Legion Festival of Remembrance last night on television and we were pleased that there was a Christian service at the end.

Then Mr. HCB and I chatted about different relatives who had been involved in both World Wars - top right is my maternal Grandfather, Alfred, who ran off to join the Army when he was 15, but his mother found out and brought him back home - however, he joined the Royal Navy a year later and was serving at sea until about 1923.

The bottom right photograph is one of the only ones I have of my father, Joseph - sitting front left - with his three brothers, and they were obviously all in the Forces but I know very little about him. He and my mother were married in 1945 at the end of the war, but they separated when I was about 3 years old and I saw very little of him after that and in fact, didn't see him at all after I was about 12 years old.

He lived in the Lake District and when I eventually found him about 35 years ago, I wrote to him, but sadly, he would never see me and he died soon after, never having seen me or Mr. HCB or our two sons. He obviously had his reasons, but it was, and still is, a great sadness to me, because I am his only daughter. However, I did get to meet his brother, John, who is standing behind him and he and his wife and son made me most welcome.

Top left is Mr. HCB’s Uncle Ernest, who was killed in June 1944, and bottom left is Mr. HCB’s father, Harry, who served in the Second World War too. He was away for the early part of J’s life, but was a wonderful husband, father and grandfather but after he returned home, like many others, he never spoke about the war.

There are so many different stories and lives that were affected and changed by war and no doubt all over the country and the world today, there will be prayers for peace. My hope and prayer today is that before long we will ALL see the end of war.

“Only the dead
have seen the end of war.”
Plato