WOODBRIDGE SCHOOL REMEMBRANCE SERVICE
Our enormous thanks must go to the Venerable Ian Morgan, Archdeacon of Suffolk, for leading this year’s Service of Remembrance, and in particular for his deeply moving address. His grandfather, Sergeant David Morgan, eighteen, fought across the fields sweeping down from what is now the Tyne Cot cemetery. He did something virtually none of his peers managed. He survived. And in so doing he gave life to Ian, and a deeply grounded sense of indebtedness in remembrance that, in Ian’s words, only really found true voice and understanding three years ago when Ian stood with his back to Tyne Cot, and in front a landscape of freshly ploughed fields as far as the eye could see, under which lay so many young men like David, but who were not so fortunate. Ian wept then; I think many of us joined him on Sunday. Ian’s message, made all the more poignant by Mr Smith’s readings and reflections and Mrs Davis’s poetry: Remembrance is so important – to help understand the present and guide our own choices and behaviour; that peace is made not bestowed; and that the blessings are given by God to the peace-makers, not the peace receivers. Today’s elderly may be (nearly) beyond use, but the young are not – and to you falls the challenge of creating that lasting peace we all crave.
The sun came out as we stood together at the School Memorial – cadets and staff, parents, friends, OWs, servicemen and women; the bugle sang so beautifully; the cannons fired; words of remembrance were cast to the Autumn breeze; and the leaves fell into the silence, to carpet the ground like the memories of the OWs we honoured.
