‘We will not break faith with ye’

At eleven o’clock this morning, there was a sound that is seldom heard in the crowded suburb of south London where I live.  Almost utter silence: the traffic banished, the sirens hushed.  Apart from an initial smattering of inevitable phone-bleeps, and the muttering of a far-off helicopter, there was only the whispering of leaves fluttering to earth in the crisp sunlight.   Normally, the cenotaph lies marooned in the turbulence of the one-way system on the London Road, but today the way was clear to the triangle of dewy grass where it stands.  There, in the presence of the Deputy Mayor of Merton, and the Chairman of the local branch of the British Legion, with Scouts (and Cubs and Rainbows and Beavers) and Sea, Air and Volunteer Police Cadets, the hymns had been sung, the unaccustomed words had been spoken, the bugle had sounded, and Mitcham for a moment lay in the quietness it knows only in these two November minutes of Remembrance.

Ralph Vaughan Williams: Pastoral Symphony, 2nd movement, with its famous bugle-call

“The Legion of the living salutes the Legion of the dead,” announced the vicar of St. Mark’s church.  “We will not break faith with ye,” we said.  It is scarcely expressible how strange such solemn language sounds now, in Mitcham and in almost every part of modern Britain, so great is the chasm between the civilisation that first uttered this sentence and the civilisation in which we say it now.  Yet say it we did, and there was no reason to suppose that anyone present did not mean it.

Squadron 43F (Mitcham and Morden) of the RAF Air Cadets.

The wreaths were laid, and the National Anthem sung.  Then renewed music from the band was the signal for the procession to march out and round to salute the dignitaries, and away up the London Road.  I was moved and impressed.  It was a superbly turned-out procession, and I think it marked Remembrance Sunday solemnly and fittingly.

The Cenotaph at Mitcham, Greater London, 10 November 2019.

And then the Police re-opened the road and flung wide the flood-gates, the first cars came round the corner, heralding the return of the unreceding tide to cut off the Cenotaph once again.  Sooner than we supposed, our affirmation of faith and honour was put to the test.  Will we remember, as (American Air Force) Colonel Gail Halvorsen told the televised Festival of Remembrance last night, that ‘attitude, gratitude and service before self bring happiness and fulfilment in life,’ and that ‘without providing for someone in need, the soul dies’?  Will we remember the fallen, and the price of war: invariably its own Hell to pay?  Will we, in spite of troubles and distractions, live in gratitude for our peace and freedom?

The last seconds before the A217 road was re-opened to traffic.