So we are now down to five men who are still alive and fought
in the first world war. That makes it in living memory but it is still
a long time ago. That difference between now and then is illustrated by
the very fact that they are alive now. In 1914, I doubt if there were
any 110 year old men alive in this country and it is interesting that
many of the new recruits to the army then were malnourished and
actually put on weight on army rations. Attitudes were different too.
You can see it in the popular songs: “We don’t want
to lose you, but we think you ought to go!” Or that silly
song, Goodbyee, the chorus of which goes:
Goodbye-ee, goodbye-ee,
Wipe the tear, baby dear, from your eye-ee,
Tho’ it's hard to part I know,
I'll be tickled to death to go.
Don’t cry-ee, don’t sigh-ee,
there’s a silver lining in the sky-ee,
Bonsoir, old thing, cheer-i-o, chin, chin,
Nap-poo, toodle-oo, Goodbye-ee.
There’s that famous quote of E M Forster, “the past is another country, they do things differently there.”
And of course, that was at the start of the war: the reality was very different. The other day, I came across this account of troops hearing the news of the armistice from an American Intelligence Officer, Col. Thomas Gowenlock:
After the long months of intense strain, of keying themselves up to the daily mortal danger, of thinking always in terms of war and the enemy, the abrupt release from it all was physical and psychological agony. Some suffered a total nervous collapse. Some, of a steadier temperament, began to hope they would someday return to home and the embrace of loved ones. Some could think only of the crude little crosses that marked the graves of their comrades. Some fell into an exhausted sleep. All were bewildered by the sudden meaninglessness of their existence as soldiers – and through their teeming memories paraded that swiftly moving cavalcade of Cantigny, Soissons, St. Mihiel, the Meuse-Argonne and Sedan.
What was to come next? They did not know – and hardly cared. Their minds were numbed by the shock of peace. The past consumed their whole consciousness. The present did not exist – and the future was inconceivable.
Everyone has learnt that lesson from the first world war and I doubt that we in this country will ever again see battles waged with tens of thousands of casualties on either side. In the 1930s, people were extremely reluctant to go to war for this very reason: but history had moved on and the world then was a different place from the world in 1914 and we ended up the second world war with three times the number of military dead and possibly, counting civilians, with nine times the total number of deaths. World war two was different from the first world war, just as that war was different from those that happened before. Civilians were in the front line and combat on the Eastern front was carried out totally without mercy and with complete indifference to civilian casualties. Thankfully, our casualties were less, but let us not forget how horrible world war 2 was.
And history has moved on again. We have had the cold war and now we have what President Bush calls the war on terror. We are facing an unknown political future, not like the past, but with climate change, likely to be a future of political instability. Oil is running out, people are demanding more from farmland which is diminishing; water resources are decreasing in some areas and increasing in others; migration is increasing. All of these factors are increasing the likelihood of conflict and we need to recognise the urgency of the situation and mobilise ourselves to do something about it. But there is no denying the complexity of the world today. What on earth is going on? What can we do about it?
Well, if anyone has simple answers to these two questions, they are almost certainly wrong. But I don’t want to be too depressing and that is why I chose the particular readings we had today. The first is a message of hope from the prophet Micah. It’s a goal, an ideal and if I can summarise it for you, it says, fair shares for all! The second reading from the sermon on the mount on the other hand is about how to achieve it. We are not going to solve the world’s problems without making sacrifices ourselves. The message of the sermon on the mount is to do with recognising the needs of others and today, those others may live far away. We may need to live more simply, in order that others may simply live and that will have its costs. But make no mistake, entering in to a war will be costlier still. There is a famous Wilfred Owen poem from the first world war, which starts. “One ever hangs where shelled roads part, in this war He too lost a limb.” The God we believe in is not a god of battles, on one side or the other, but a God who understands our sufferings and enters into them. And this is a message for us: we pray to God for peace, not victory. Bringing peace is a costly business, but it is what we are called to do.
And while we are thinking about what we can do to bring about a world of peace remember those who are suffering now, trying to bring peace to war-torn lands. We are taking casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. Young lives are being cut short and others are being blighted by blindness, deafness and the loss of limbs. Those who have died often make the news, but those who are injured, rarely. Let us not forget them, particularly as you go past our retiring collection.
War is terrible and evil, but people, ordinary people, respond with bravery and self-sacrifice. I don’t know whether you saw the recent television programme on the fighting in Afghanistan, but it was an eye-opener. The soldiers were fighting, sometimes for 12 hours at a time, in blistering heat, living in rough accommodation and under constant threat. This is what we are asking our soldiers to do. We give thanks for their actions and honour the dead in all the wars, but we do that most of all when we work and make our own sacrifices to bring justice and eliminate war and violence from this world. Let us not let them down.