Remembrance Day: lest we forget

Abstract

‘At the going down of the sun and in the morning / We will remember them’. When the poet Laurence Binyon wrote these words that now adorn many a war memorial and monument, a simple, solemn promise was being made to those who had fallen ‘in the cause of the free’; their immeasurable sacrifice would not be forgotten. Now, each year across the Commonwealth of Nations, Remembrance Sunday is commemorated. We honour ‘the Glorious Dead’ with poignant gestures of respect and thanksgiving and, for at least two minutes of thoughtful silence, we can publicly or privately reflect upon matters of life and death, mourn our own loss and grief and, as an individual or as a community, share that sense of sadness and sorrow for the generations of men and women blighted by conflict and war.