On Sunday, we join together as a nation to remember those who have made the ultimate sacrifice in defence of this great country.
I will be amongst the congregation at St. Alphege Church in Solihull for the Service of Remembrance on Sunday Morning. This solemn event never fails to move me.
Our silence and collective contemplation on those cold November mornings year after year; poppies pinned on coats, stunning poppy displays on church walls and knitted post-box toppers; the playing of the last post, the saying of prayers, the singing of hymns. We do all these things to show our respect and our gratitude to all those who have laid down their lives for Britain and for our freedom. They lie in churchyards and cemeteries across this country, and in corners of foreign fields all over the world. Their sacrifice will never be forgotten.
There will be remembrance events taking place across Solihull on Sunday. In Solihull Town Centre and many of our villages and urban centres these require roads to be closed, so leave a little more time if you’re travelling that day.
I’ll leave you with some lines from Rupert Brooke’s The Soldier.
“If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam;
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.”