Episode details

Radio 4,3 mins
100th anniversary of the battle of Amiens - 8th August 2018. Rev Dr Michael Banner - 09/08/208
Thought for the DayAvailable for over a year
Good morning. At the far end of Trinity Chapel, on the walls behind and around the altar, there is a rather simple memorial to the dead of the 1st War. In 30 columns, side by side, you find a list of names, 619 in all – which was about the size of the entire undergraduate body in those days. Yesterday, the 8th August, was the 100th anniversary of the battle of Amiens, which is reckoned to be the beginning of the end of the 1st World War. An allied offensive finally broke the stalemate of the grueling conflict and 100 days later the allies had pushed home their advantage and compelled the Germans to surrender. Given the numbers of Trinity dead, one might very reasonably guess that some of them died at Amiens – and, sure enough, when I ] scanned the records I could lay my hands on, I quickly found two names of those who seem to have died in the offensive: Maurice Gray, having served since the very beginning of the war, was killed in action on the 8th August, 1918, at the age of 28 – his younger brother, by the way, had died in action five months earlier. And then, not far below Gray in that daunting list, I found Donald Holman, just 24, also killed in action on August 8th. The Trinity memorial is simple to the point of being stark – there is no statue or image, no word about valour or glory. The list tells us, in effect, to remember the dead – displaying these names so prominently rather implies we have that obligation – but it doesn’t seem to tell us what or why we should remember. I guess the clue is provided by the placing of the monument – round the Chapel’s altar. At certain times and in certain place, and more commonly than not perhaps, altars have been sites where blood is shed – animal blood for sure, and of course, more darkly still, human blood. The Christian altar, however, is a place not where blood is shed, but where the shedding of blood - Christ’s blood – is remembered, and remembered as having been done once and for all. Christ’s sacrifice is supposed to call a halt to sacrifice, to end bloodshed, not perpetuate it. The Christian altar says, in effect, ‘never again’. I think that roll call of names, although accompanied by no explicit injunction, echoes that ‘never again’. Of course, we come to this 100th anniversary of the beginning of the end of the 1st War, knowing only too well that in the ending of that great war the seeds were being sown for the beginning of the next. And at the other end of Trinity Chapel, you can find another list (thankfully somewhat shorter), of the dead of the 2nd World War. But what does that tell us? – but that it is only too easy for nations to fall into the sort of competitive and antagonistic relationships in which suspicion and mistrust can lead to outright hostilities. At a time when old alliances are being questioned, and newer bonds of friendship and collaboration are being reconfigured, remembering seems to be more, not less, imperative.
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