The Unknown Warriors

The Kohima Epitaph

When you go home,

Tell Them of us and say,

For your tomorrow,

We gave our today.

Kohima War Cemetery, Burma

A Kings Question

Can there be more potent advocates of peace upon earth through the years to come, than this massed multitudes of silent witnesses to the desolation of war?

King George V, Flanders 1922

A Pray for the Dead of Two World Wars

LET US REMEMBER —

Those who died in battle or in prison camps, or fell victims to disease;

Those whose bodies rest in foreign lands, or in the great deep.

All of whatsoever nation died in the service of their country.

Holy is the true light and passing wonderful, lending radiance to them that endured in the heat of conflict; from Christ they inherit a home of unfading splendour, wherein they rejoice with gladness evermore.

WE praise and bless Thy glorious name, O Lord, for the glad and willing sacrifice of those who laid down their lives that we might live; and we pray that we, like them, may follow their good examples to serve Thee, our country, and the cause of justice and freedom, till the deliverance: through Jesus Christ our Lord.

And a Pray For All Who Suffer By Reason of the War

Almighty and Everlasting God, the strength of them that suffer. We commend unto Thy loving kindness, all those who are stricken and suffering by reason of the War; the disabled, the blinded, the homeless, those whose minds are clouded or unhinged, all who have been bereaved of those dear to them; all whose faith in Thee has been shaken, by what they have seen or suffered. Strengthen them, O God, with Thy love for mankind, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

Both part of the first post-WW2 Remembrance Service. St. Nicholas Garrison Church, Luneberg, Germany. 11th Nov, 1945.

The Dead

Rupert Brooke 1887-1915

These hearts were woven of human joys and cares,

Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth.

The years had given them kindness. Dawn was theirs,

And sunset, and the colours of the earth.

These had seen movement, and heard music; known

Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended;

Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat alone;

Touched flowers and furs and cheeks. All this is ended.

There are waters blown by changing winds to laughter

And lit by the rich skies, all day. And after,

Frost, with a gesture, stays the waves that dance

And wandering loveliness. He leaves a white

Unbroken glory, a gathered radiance,

A width, a shining peace, under the night.

High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there

I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air.

Up, up the long delirious, burning blue,

I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace

Where never lark, or even eagle flew -

And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod

The high untresspassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee, an American, came to Britain in Oct 1940 and joined the Royal Canadian Airforce to fly Spitfires. The poem was written on the back of a letter to his parents which stated, “I am enclosing a verse I wrote the other day. It started at 30,000 feet, and was finished soon after I landed.”

No 412 squadron, RCAF

Killed 11 December 1941 aged 19 years.