Remembrance Day: What This Means to Our People

Laura Lee, Health and Safety Consultant

Remembrance Day

The birds are silent now.
No sky-strung larks of Flanders Fields to wing
Their tuneful eulogies on high.

No zephyrs breathe upon
Gunmetal clouds. Time bids the air
Be still as death.

A mantle of gilded hush enfolds the countryside. The frenzy of the nowadays
Is faded as a dream of long ago.
The ranks of trees and houses line the road

Lifting their grave visages
To their Dead.
Those far-flung hearts beyond the ocean’s breadth.
They watched them go.

David Page, Area Delivery Manager

November the 11th is, and will always be, a deeply powerful and personal day. To me it is a time of reflection and gratitude. I reflect not only on the brave souls that gave the ultimate sacrifice during conflict, but I also spend significant time considering my service. I am grateful for the legends that I was privileged to rub shoulders with and some of the deployments and situations that I found myself in, many of which shaped me, both professionally and personally.

My contemplation is not solely focused on the darker sides of service, but I make it a goal to always find time to celebrate the highs of my military career.

Despite this, at sometime during the day (usually on the bugle player’s final note of ‘Last Post’ and the first note of ‘Reveille’), I find my memories always take me to Camp Bastion at a midnight tailgate repatriation, honouring fallen colleagues on the first part of their final journey home.

The names of those heroes, who either didn’t come home with me or left something behind, will also be at the forefront of my thoughts and I will celebrate knowing them.

'They shall not grow 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.’

Extract from For the Fallen by Robert Laurence Binyon.

Colin Gray, Regional Delivery Manager

I wear the poppy in remembrance of those who fought in the wars, including my grandfather Campbell Gray, who wrote about his experiences at Normandy in 1944 as a Para.

He recalls jumping from a Stirling bomber 500 ft over Normandy as one of the vast numbers of airborne forces involved in Operation Overlord. This is just a short snippet from his memories.

“It was a moonlit night with some light cloud. I had quite a good descent, landing a bit heavily but safely in a corn field with stalks up to my waist. I gathered myself together after releasing my harness and dumping the jump jacket. I then had to get to the Rendezvous Point which was a quarry just on the approaches to Ranville.

“I eventually reached the quarry being guided by a flashing red-light for my battalion, the others being a hunting horn and a whistle for different rendezvous points. The Drop Zone was coming under fire by this time but most of us were clear of it by then.”

“On D+6 my battalion (what was left of it) were chosen to take the village of Breville, which was heavily defended. We were down to around eight officers and 350 men by this time and we proceeded to a place called Amfreville, where we trooped into the local church for briefing and the order was ‘Breville must be taken’. The cost was very heavy indeed - all our officers killed or wounded and 168 dead from all companies. Only around 100 of the original battalion remained and the following day was spent burying the dead.

“When I returned to Normandy at the 40th anniversary, I went to Breville and the grave is still there alongside the ruins of the Church.

Apparently the people of Breville asked that it remain there instead of being removed to the Military Cemetery at Ranville.”

Alex Brown, Client Development Manager

I was visiting my grandmother on a day off. Just before 11am on the 11th of November, she was out in the street trying (and succeeding) to stop traffic, imploring the local community to take a moment and honour those that should be remembered. It worked and around dozen cars stopped and took part in the silence. I hope it had the same impact on those 15 or so individuals that it did on me.