IN MEMORIAM.

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The Churchill Society
London.

Be of good cheer.
The hour of your deliverance will come.
The soul of freedom is deathless.
It cannot and will not perish.

Winston Churchill

Broadcast, London,

11th September 1940

For the Fallen

(1914)

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,

England mourns for her dead across the sea.

Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,

Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal

Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.

There is music in the midst of desolation

And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,

Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.

They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,

They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old,

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun, and in the morning,

We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;

They sit no more at familiar tables of home;

They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;

They sleep beyond England's foam.

But where our desires and our hopes profound,

Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,

to the innermost heart of their own land they are known

As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,

Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,

As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,

To the end, to the end, they remain.

Laurence Binyon.

The poet

__________________________

The Society does not seek to glorify Churchill or War. The vast majority of men and women who died in the wars of this century, did not die in glorious charges against the enemy positions. Some died of disease, some of carelessness. Many died of bad luck; and most died because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Death in righteous wars is rarely glorious, but it is nonetheless most honourable. The finest way we can Honour Their Memory is to ensure our children understand the causes of war so that they will never permit dictators to ever rise up again.

The decay of War Memorials
is a cause of great concern.

We believe they should all
come under the protection of

The new web site of

THE WAR GRAVES COMMISSION

As from Monday the 9th November 1998.

and a

National Programme of Restoration

should be undertaken

Mrs Pamela Timms (CHAIRMAN) writes:

With the approach of November and, therefore of Remembrance Day, might this not be an appropriate time to ensure that all our War Memorials are in good order?

It would be heartening to know that by the dawn of the Millennium, all these memorials - whether in small country villages or in large towns and cities - are in pristine condition, so that the youth of the future may look at them and read thereon the names of those who, in the wars of the 20th century, gave their lives for the freedom enjoyed today - with the fervent hope that the youth of the 21st century will not be called upon to make the same sacrifice as that made by their great - grandparents, grandparents, and parents.

..Crudely renewed, the Salient hold it's own,

Paid are its dim defenders by this pomp,

Paid, with a pile of peace complacent stone,

The armies who endured that sullen swamp

'Their name liveth forever,' the Gateway claims,

Was ever an immolation so belied

As these intolerably nameless names?

Well might the Dead who struggled in the slime,

Rise and deride this sepulchre of crime."

Siegfried Sassoon

On Passing The New Menin Gate

The text above - and the poem selected - is the work of Mr Steven Metcalfe. His leadership and ideas re these matters - as is the web site he has created - are excellent and I quote from his e mail:-

"What I am trying to do on my site is to provide details about each man to show that he was a living person and not simply a name carved on a piece of stone. One of my inspirations for doing this work was the poem by Siegfried Sassoon which is quoted in part on my home page. In it he complains of the "intolerably nameless names" on the Menin Gate at Ypres and I believe that what he is saying is that the individual soldiers "lose" their individual identities among the mass of names. Naturally it would depend on the format of your listing, but I feel that simply to list the names of the men would fall into the same trap which Sassoon complained about in his poem. . . . . .

Frontispiece.

Society's address.

Contact the society.

______________________

If you would like to help, please contact:
THE SECRETARY

A full list of UK War Memorial Links is on their web sites.

The UK Friends of War Memorials
The American Legion, 700, North Pennsylvania,

Indianapolis IN 46204 USA

The Military Magazine for the Washington DC area.

The US Army Information Command, Fort Huachuca, AZ 85613, USA

US Gulf War Veterans Association:

US WWII Veterans Association:

Department of Veterans' Affairs:

A SPECIAL PAGE where veterans can enter their details and search for old friends:

Veterans News and Information Service:

The Australian War Memorial:

The Western Front Association

Dutch WWII organisations.

The Dutch all speak English and would be pleased to hear from you.