On Sunday, the day before the centenary of the start of the
First World War, the vicar of our local parish church in King’s Sutton, Father
Roger Bellamy, orchestrated a special remembrance event ‒ a mix of words and music.
He asked me to read three of the poems – two by Wilfred
Owen, ‘From My Diary, July 1914’ and the wonderful ‘Strange Meeting’, and a
third by Laurence Binyon, the one that has this as its fourth verse:
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.
The fact that these words have been repeated thousands of
times around the world does nothing to reduce their simplicity and their power.
Our village lost twenty-two men in that conflict and on Monday the church bell
tolled 'at the going down of the sun' for each of them.
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