Normandy Veterans Service |
“Gentlemen in spite of your excellent training and orders, do not be daunted if chaos reigns. It undoubtedly will.” Brigadier James Hill’s briefing on the eve of D Day.
We know what the end of the story was, how after terrible losses France was liberated and the war was brought to a victorious conclusion. It was not until I had the privilege of joining veterans from the 6th Airborne Division in their visit earlier this year to the Normandy battlefields that I began to understand just what a hazardous enterprise it was, that so many of you embarked upon sixty years ago. The logistical difficulties were of course immense and as Alanbrooke wrote in his diary on the eve of D Day, the Normandy landings “may well be the most ghastly disaster of the whole war.”
That it was not a disaster owed everything to the leadership and courage of those who took part. Today in St Paul’s the nation through its representatives can honour those who fell and salute those who remember and who were part of the story.
Your memories are precious. We are sorry for individuals who have lost their memories. If you cannot tell what you have been and done, how you have loved and suffered then your identity seems to be diminished. The same is true for whole communities. Occasions of remembrance like this can help us as a people to understand where we have come from, what we have stood for, the mistakes we have made and what it is worth living and dying for.
There was a time not so very long ago when people were in the habit of saying that it was time to move on and give up observing anniversaries like this. I do not hear anyone saying that now. There is too much to learn here which can equip us for life in a dangerous world.
One of the best things about the celebrations in Normandy earlier this year was the way in which veterans were able to share their memories with today’s serving soldiers. Your memories make a contribution to ensuring, what I believe to be true, and tested in many emergencies, that the British armed services display both professionalism and humanity.
One of the most vivid accounts of the Normandy campaign I have read comes from Dr Tibbs, a Medical Officer in 1944. He wrote his “Doctor’s Story” in his words “as a message to future generations to remind them that barbarism is always lurking nearby and that good leadership of a nation is crucial. Even a democracy can become a self extinguishing system weakened by abuse of its freedom.”
In 1944 you faced a system based on an idea which saw human society as a machine engineered to respond to single will. It was necessary to confront that system and say no.
But the cost was high. On the Eastern flank of the landings, the burial ground at Ranville was a green field on June 6th but by June 17th over 160 men were buried there. More British soldiers lie in that one cemetery than have lost their lives in all the operations since the beginning of the Falklands war. Passing down the ranks of gravestones you see how young they were. One lad of sixteen, explained a surviving friend of his, had signed up at fourteen. You will have many such memories and will not be inclined to underestimate the horror or the pity of war. In fact old soldiers are some of the least bellicose people I know.
But alongside the horror and the pity there is proper pride in the way in which battle revealed courage in young soldiers who had a lot to lose but who were inspired by loyalty to comrades more than to ideas, to bear and do extraordinary things.
Courage is of course a vital ingredient in any life worth living. I remember being taken around a mouldering church by the churchwardens. One of them said to me “you know bish, I think it’s only inertia that keeps us going”. The other warden simply said “Courage mate”.
The courage we need is not of course only physical although that is to be admired but at every stage of our lives we need moral courage to take risks, to live life to the full, to persevere in illness and to stand up for our beliefs especially when the crowd is against us.
Courage is an expression of our deepest being. It is often an instinctive striving rather than something you think about. Because courage is an expression of our deepest being it may involve the sacrifice of many desirable things – pleasure comfort and even existence itself. But life in all its fullness only becomes possible when we have found the courage to confront death and strive after our deepest being.
Those involved in the Normandy campaign belonged to different faith communities. I found it very to pray alongside a Jewish ex serviceman at the resting place of one of his friends and there were soldiers from many other nations and faiths fighting side by side.
It is the faith of a Christian that you need to confront death in order to know life in all its fullness. This is the meaning of the life death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The calling of the Christian religion is to resist death in all its forms through participating in the life of God. We are called to join Jesus Christ in confronting the anti-life forces which we see in unawareness of a neighbours need; in hatred of those whose colour and creed are not like ours; in the immobilising fear which causes us to shrink into ourselves. The anti-life force has many disguises and is literally deadening.
We live in a dangerous world but one of huge opportunities. One of the major threats in these circumstances is that many nice people seem to lack all conviction and are not strenuous in their living and working for the common good. Thank you for what you did. Thank you for your example of courage and comradeship. Thank you for the legacy you pass on.
I began with a comment from 1944. I end with the same man in 2004, Brigadier James Hill. Conscious of the huge changes coming on our wired up world and the great challenges we have to face he nevertheless concluded “I am so looking forward to the next thousand years.” Thank you all for the hope you have bequeathed to us.
