Whether it is the silent pale sprawl of Tynecot, the weeping mother at watch on Vimy Ridge or the daily mark of respect at the Menin Gate, it is hard to visit the battlefields of northern France and Belgium without being moved by the sheer enormity of the destruction, sacrifice and courage that the First World War saw.
A million British soldiers made that journey to fight, never to return. It was not just the fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers of ours, but men from Canada, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, the West Indies and others who travelled across the world to serve. Indeed, the weeping mother at Vimy Ridge is Mother Canada, weeping for those Canadians who sailed across the Atlantic to fight and fall in Northern Europe.
It is always humbling to see the huge impact and resonance the First World War has always held. On the 16th July 1936, five liners set sail from Montreal, carrying over six thousand pilgrims. Across the sea they came, over three thousand miles, to Northern France to see the dedication of the Memorial at Vimy. Unlike those that came before them, they returned.
Next year it will be the Centenary of the start of the First World War yet still we travel, like the Canadian pilgrims, to gather, to remember.
This year, I am going to make a special journey of my own, to visit one of the 262 Commonwealth War Graves from the two World Wars that are here in Swindon. They crossed the Channel, they fought, they fell but unlike most, they made it home. Theirs is not a name on a stone in Tynecot, nor on a wall of remembrance in Ypres, but it is immortalised here in our Town and it is important that it is not forgotten.
I hope that some will choose to join me, making a visit of your own to our cemeteries to pay your respects. Blunsdon, Highworth, Rodbourne Cheney, South Marston, Lower Stratton, St Margaret, Upper Stratton, Whitworth Road, Bishopstone, Chiseldon, Hinton Parva, Christ Church, Radnor Street, Wanborough and Wroughton all have war graves, the final resting place of Swindon men who went to fight.
This year too is the first time that the Coleshill Auxiliary Units will be marching on Remembrance Sunday, a mark of the great risk that the Unit’s personnel took in feeding the intelligence effort during the fight against Hilter.
This Remembrance Sunday as we give thanks to those who have given their lives in defence of our freedom, let us be proud of the Swindon men who joined those from all over the world to defend our freedom in Europe nearly 100 years ago.
