Today is Remembrance Day in the UK, the eleventh day of the eleventh month when, at the eleventh hour, we remember all those who have given their lives in conflict.

As I watched the March Past of the Veterans and their families today it brought me to tears, as it does every year. I remembered the stories my father and grandfather used to tell of their experiences, and those of my grandmother who stayed in London throughout the blitz. I saw so many young men and women marching - younger than me, a constant reminder that conflict goes on and that families are still suffering grief and loss.

Whatever your feelings about Wars and conflicts we should never forget the sacrifice that has been made for us by those men and women - we owe them a debt of gratitude and a duty of remembrance.

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 labor of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England’s foam.

But where our desires are 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.

Lawrence Binyon (1869-1943)

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