I recently discovered this piece, written by my grandad in November 1935. He was a factory worker and he wrote about the remembrance day service held at Rubery Owen in Darlaston, West Midlands. I think it gives an interesting insight into how things were and how much the effects of 'The Great War' were still being felt. Considering how close they were to World War II, the part about putting our trust in the people who will "...keep the world at peace for years to come..." seems doubly poignant.
Lest We Forget
Nov 11th 1935
Once more Armistice day was upon us, and at 10:45am the annual service of remembrance was about to begin. Anyone coming into our toolroom would have seen a sight strange to a nuts and bolts factory. Employees and employers were all gathered together for the purpose of joining in the thanksgiving to those who during the great war laid down their lives for King and country.
Eager faces were upon the Rev. B. Chadwick, the vicar of All
Saints Church when he mounted the impressive platform to open the service with
a short prayer, and at his first words “let us pray” every head was bowed and
every tongue was stilled.
With well-chosen words he prayed for those who had passed
on, and those whom they had left behind, he prayed for those men and women who
were still suffering from the effects of the war, the maimed and the blind and
those whose bodies were still pain-wracked from wounds they received in the
great struggle for supremacy.
He asked that God’s blessing be upon everyone who had cause
to remember that awful conflict and that extra power would be given to those in
whom we placed our trust, to keep the world at peace in the years to come, and
then all who were congregated there joined in the prayed that our Lord Jesus
Christ taught. “Our father, who art in heaven…”
The vicar then stepped down and his place was taken by
Councillor A G B Owen, one of the board of directors, who had so kindly come to
give a short address, and everyone had a pleasant surprise, for instead of
hearing a speech of intricate terms of phraseology that could not be
understood, we had a delightful sermon in very plain words that came from the
heart, and must have gone to the hearts of those who heard them.
His address was a message of love, happiness, helpfulness and
Christianity, he told us that to be a good, honest, Christian, we must put our
faith in Christ whom, to use Councillor Owen’s own words “Changes the whole
surface of the world, when he gave so much for us on Calvary.”
Councillor Own then spoke of the tract that our Queen sent
to all her friends on the occasion of their Majesties Silver Jubilee and of the
message it contained.
He also spoke of our King, of how his majesty read a portion
of the bible every day. What an inspiration for all who heard to place their
trust in one to whom even our sovereign kneels to honour.
The dull roar of a maroon in the distance heralded the start
of the two minutes silence, a silence so tense that it could almost be felt. It
seemed as if the very pulsing of our hearts had stopped in reverence of the men
who gave so much for us.
And then my mind wandered. I no longer stood n our toolroom,
I was on the battlefields of France and what a panorama of destruction lay
before me. Where once the golden grain or wild flowers of every description had
lifted their heads towards the sun, there was now a stench of broken, uneven
ground that looked as if the very fiends of hell had been turned upon it.
Instead of songbirds rising from their nests and sending out
their full throated message of gladness to the world at large, heavy artillery,
machine guns and rifles were sending their screaming, whining messages of death
across that ground which was rightly named “No Man’s Land”
Miles of sandbagged trenches stretched before me along which
I saw many weary tommies, slogging their way through a filth of slime which came
up to their knees, seemingly trying to hold them back from going any further into
this ghastly war.
I saw an officer give the signal and hundreds of men went over
the top and went racing across no mans land in the face of an enemy barrage
that was too terrible to behold. I saw their faces as they went on and one
shouting madly to gain their objective, in their eyes showed that lust which
urged them on to kill and destroy, a lust that seemed so slow that they had
lost all prestige of decency and manhood.
Oh god! How my heart bled when I saw many of them fall and
lie inert on that bloody sword, their lifeblood ebbing from them and staining
the face of the earth a crimson hue.
And then I saw the ominous yellow mist being borne on the
breeze right into the faces of the charging men. I saw them hastily fitting on
gas masks and then I knew what the cloud was. Poison gas, the most terrible
weapon of the war, a gas which ate the lungs out of any unfortunate who came
into contact with it unprepared.
Then the scene changes. I was in a dressing station behind
the lines. Here I saw women of every station of life in uniforms of red cross
nurses dashing hither and thither, comforting tending and dressing the broken
bodies of the men who were lying on stretchers, or propped up against the
walls. I saw a nurse standing low over a youngster, barely out of his teens,
tears were streaming down her face as she held her ear close to his mouth to
catch the last words of a letter she was writing for him to his mother. I saw
her steady his hand to write his name and then, with a smile of gratitude ad a
softly uttered ‘thank you nurse, god bless you’ the youngster passed on to Him
who said “Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give
you rest.”
Each year a Remembrance Day service is held on top og Great Gable. This blog explores the history behind that.