Today is Remembrance Sunday in Britain where Britons remember all the millions of British and Commonwealth soldiers, sailors, airmen and others who served this country in all the conflicts since World War One. We remember those who served and those who didn’t come back from these conflicts.

We remember also those who returned from serving their country who did not return back to their families whole but instead came back broken in body and in mind. We remember those who answered the call from various governments to defend Britain and its interests but on their return became forgotten people left to rot by the very governments that sent them to fight. These are the men and women who endured unimaginable horrors on our behalf but whom governments have treated as disposable. No homes fit for heroes for them just a cardboard box in a shop doorway.

Almost 108 years to the day since the guns fell silent on the battlefields of Europe and elsewhere, we still remember, still hold as sacred those who lost their lives or were broken by all the wars including and since World War One. They gave their lives so that we might live. We remember the families of all those who served that were broken by all the wars of the 20^th and 21^st centuries. We remember the families where there was always an empty place at the dinner table, the families where the loss never went away and the families where the losses have created intergenerational harm through grief and the damage, mental and physical, that war has done to the family members who had served.

We remember because we must because to do otherwise is to cheapen the sacrifices of those who gave everything for Britain.

For the Fallen

By Laurence Binyon

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England’s foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.