At the going down of the sun

... and in the morning, we will remember them.

It was a beautiful, and unseasonally warm, day at the village cenotaph this morning. We remembered those who had fallen, and those who came home but marked by what they had seen or done or had done to them. Some of them came home in body but not in mind; my mother has a tale of a man known to her family who had been tortured and was no longer in contact with reality, nor ever would be.

Those who served in the Great War have all gone now. The ranks of those who served in the Second World War are dwindling fast. Among those who left us this year was someone who trained in the ATS, who later married a naval officer who had served under fire. It was unsettling when the Queen died a few weeks ago, not least because one of the things she represented was being one of the remaining living links with that time. I sang "God save the King" for the first time this morning. It has been "God save the Queen" for all of my life. Now she is gone, as are so many who served both on the front line and on the home front.

So many soldiers of the Commonwealth; so many countries and so many faiths. Lest we forget the sacrifice they made, for their future and our present. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, as we have demonstrated far too often in the decades since.