Remembrance Sermon

Remembrance Sunday Sermon

(2001)

There are 28 names on the reredos in the memorial chapel, all men. Two of them are priests and all of them worshiped at All Saints, lived near to All Saints or had close connections with the church. They all died in the First World War.

Private Paul Raynbird served with the 2nd Battalion of the Hampshire Regiment. He died on Wednesday 9th August 1916 near Ypres in Belgium. From the date he died and from where he is buried it is likely that he was killed in a German gas attack that killed 46 officers and men of the Hampshire Regiment.

Ernest William Mayo served in the 4th Battalion of the Grenadier Guards. His father Edwin Mayo was a clerk in the Great Western Railway, his mother was called Elizabeth, they lived in Burgess Rd. Ernest was 27 when he was killed in September 1916. He was caught in Delville Wood a tiny corner of land in the Somme that changed hands several times that summer with huge loss of life.
I can’t imagine what his parents must have gone through that autumn, their younger son was also in the grenadier guards, the same battalion in the same part of France.

Just before Christmas in the same year Reginald Mayo, just 21, Ernest’s little brother, was wounded near to where his brother had died.
He was brought back from the front to a hospital near Amiens.
When his parents heard that he was wounded were they relieved, frightened, just numb?
But Reginald died of his injuries on 7th December 1916 and never came back from France.

Fred Dibley was 19, he lived at 59 Hackwood Rd. His mother was Ann Dibley.
Fred joined the Hampshire Regiment like many of his friends. He was killed on the Somme that same summer of 1916.

Charles Gaines was 34. He lived at 54 Hackwood Rd, his mother Amelia was a widow. He was killed on the Somme on the 31st August 1916, the infamous 1st Battle of the Somme. Charles has no known grave but his name appears on the Thiepval Memorial.

William Tigwell was a neighbour, 38 Hackwood Rd, also in the Hampshire Regiment; he joined up in Winchester with his younger brother, and their battalion shipped out to India and the Middle East. I don’t know where exactly William died; somewhere in Mesopotamia shortly before his battalion HQ was captured. He died on the 21st January 1916, he was 24 and his name is still recorded on the Basra Memorial in modern Iraq. It is at a place called Nasiriyah, the middle of a battleground from the Gulf War.

William Tigwell’s name is next to George Tigwell’s. His little brother, he was 22, they died on the same day far from home.
William and George Tigwell’s mother was called Ada.

William and George must have known Frederick Trodd. He lived at 6 Hackwood Road.  He had only just arrived in Mesopotamia when he was killed in March 1917. He was 18. A man in his battalion, Arthur Foster, kept a diary; I have the passage from the month when William died.

Five young men from one street.
I don’t know why I kept looking.

Rupert Inglis was a priest. He had served in the parish as a curate. He joined up as a chaplain and kept a diary.
At first it is optimistic and bright, but it changes as he spends more time close to the front in France.
At first he tells us about the services he took, the hymns and the singing. Later he spends his time in no mans land searching for the wounded and bringing bodies back for burial. He was killed doing that, looking for the wounded and bringing back the bodies of men killed in no mans land.
He was 53, he died in September 1916 and has no known grave. He is named on the Thiepval memorial.

Why is this stuff important?

My gut tells me that these 28 men are somehow with us here at All Saints, with their names up on the wall their memory lives on as if they were part of our family. In my gut, that’s it, it is as if they were part of our family.
It is the same for everyone, what happened in the war, 1st, 2nd, Korea, Suez, Falklands, Gulf, that is part of the people we British are, like it or not.

My mind tells me something a bit different. For many of my generation there is no reality to war. Even on TV real war looks like a video game, if there is any hope of learning some lessons from war, any hope of not making the same mistakes again then we must make those men live again to tell their story.

I want to hear Elizabeth Mayo’s voice; she lost two sons in one year and she knew something about the reality of war.
I want to read Fr Rupert Inglis’ words as he wrote, exhausted, after caring for the sick, and burying the dead, and blessing the living.

We honour them in gold leaf; well let’s honour them by trying to listen to them.