Here’s the text of the short speech Martin, one of the humanist volunteers at the University of Plymouth Pastoral and Spiritual Care Team, gave at the University’s Remembrance Ceremony this morning. Martin is grateful for the help input received from other humanists around the country in putting this together.
In honouring the dead, we do not honour war;
in remembering victories,
we do not forget the suffering and loss
of those who fought with us,
of those who fought against us
and all victims of war – soldier or civilian.
The numbers in WW1 were horrendous – about 65 million people took part and around 10 million died. The then Prime Minister promised in 1918 that his government would “make Britain a fit country for heroes to live in”. It is too easy to be cynical about such promises but surely the only way to honour the memory of those who fought or were harmed by war is by committing to the future. We must try to help those we share this planet with and the generations still to come. We have to increase understanding to reduce the barriers of prejudice and division. We must choose empathy and cooperation, and work for peace not because it is easy, but because it is necessary for our shared humanity.
The author Terry Pratchett said “No one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away, until the clock wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone’s life is only the core of their actual existence.” Novelist George Elliot said, “The dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them.” I would like to say a few words about some people I knew who fought in the world wars.
I know that my grandfather, a very gentle man who was born into a poor family, was at the Dardanelles where he was trapped in a shellhole with a dead mule and that he was later at the Somme but my grandfather really didn’t talk about it. There were medals in his house, but nothing was said. From World War 2 there was an Anderson shelter in my grandparents’ garden which was a silent relic to the next huge conflict. One of my uncles was an RAF navigator in WW2. He didn’t say anything much about it though he mentioned a couple of amusing things such as on the morning after VE day having to fly with an exceptionally bad hangover. A friend of my fathers who had fought in North Africa talked about something much nastier in the pub one night. That was the only time I ever heard some details of the killing.
Debbie has already commemorated those who died on this spot. I would like us to reflect on how the World Wars stretched around the globe. This is fitting for two reasons. We live in a multi-cultural society, together with the children of people from across what was then an Empire many of whom came to defend it in both world wars. Also, because we are here today on the campus of an international institution, the University of Plymouth. Staff and students from around the world will also remember the wars we commemorate now. Both Polish and Czechoslovakian fighter squadrons defended Plymouth from nearby RAF Harrowbeer in WW2. We can recall that during that period almost 20 million people died in China and over 20 million from the then Soviet Union died during what they called the Great Patriotic War. People from Plymouth will have sailed around the north of Norway to help the Soviet Union during that awful struggle. My mother said to me several times that as a child she was told that we had an ally in ‘Uncle Joe’ Stalin. A story that changed soon after that war ended.
My wife’s family is from western Germany. Her parents were children during the war. An aunt as a child was so scared that she was always one of the first in the bomb shelters. People in the village joked that “she could hear the planes taking off in England”. An uncle who was older was captured on the Eastern Front and kept there until 1949 as he was a mechanic. He said that his captors treated him well. These anecdotes are to remind us that people everywhere are human beings even when they are on the other side of a war.
To conclude, we are here to remember not just acts of courage and sacrifice, but also the values that drove people: their belief in a better world, in a future where we see each other not as strangers or enemies, but as companions on this shared journey of life.
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