Preached at St John’s, Devizes
Readings – Micah 4: 1–5; Romans 8: 35–39
Henry Allingham died in the year 2009, at the age of a hundred and thirteen, as the oldest man in the world. An air mechanic, he was the last survivor of the Battle of Jutland, and later served with the air reconnaissance units supporting the offensive at Passchendaele.
For eight long decades, Henry tried to forget what he’d seen on the Western Front. It was only towards the end of his life that he began to open up about what he remembered. Then, it was obvious why he’d wanted to forget. He once said that his Remembrance Day was the 22nd of September, when he lost three mates. He spoke of men standing in two feet of water in mud-filled trenches waiting to go over the top, knowing exactly what their likely fate was. He once spent a night in a shell hole. “It stank,” he said. “So did I when I fell into it. Arms and legs, dead rats, dead everything. Rotten flesh. Human guts.”
It is more comfortable, in some ways, to forget. So why do we remember? One reason is the sense of duty that we rightly feel to honour those who made the supreme sacrifice. Another important reason for remembering is because those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.
But to remember also means something else. The word ‘member’ can mean a body part; indeed originally that was its only English meaning. Member is a word that came into English, via Norman French, from the Latin word membrum, which means limb. The word remember also has its root in this Latin word, membrum. So to re-member someone is literally to put their limbs together again. When we remember the dead, we bring them to life in our hearts and souls.