“Tell me about the war granddad!”

My granddad, Fred, served on the King George VI battleship in WWII. He would tell me stories when I was a little boy; stories about the vicar he met who was “an alright bloke”, the man with ginger hair who they stuffed in a huge washing-machine aboard the ship and many more. My favourite was about the man who worked in the same gun tower as him and gave my granddad a letter to give to his wife in case he died. “Don’t be a fool!” my granddad said. “If you get blown up I’ll be going with you. Find someone elsewhere on the ship for your letter.”

Listening to my granddad’s stories and watching war films as a kid gave war a certain… well, to be honest, romance.

Films like Schindler’s List put pay to those notions…

I remember going to the cinema with my dad to watch Saving Private Ryan. As usual we bought massive bags of sweets and didn’t touch them…

What struck me, aside from the horrific scenes on the screen, was the line of men sat a few rows in front of us who were of an age that they’d possibly been in the war. They were watching what they’d lived.

I also remember visiting Dunkirk a few years back. There was one field right on the windswept coastline that they’d left untouched from the battles. Craters the size of semi-detached houses left an uncomfortable feeling in the mind… Line upon line of white crosses in the graveyard...

Those crosses, and the small wooden ones with poppies on, remind us of the symbol of the Christian faith on which Jesus died. Stanley Hauerwas, an American Christian recently said: “At the cross God takes in our violence without passing it on.”

Although the Church has, rightly at times, been blamed for many wars I believe the cross is a reminder of God’s desire that we may live in a world without violence; now that would be amazing.

So may I encourage you, whatever your views on war, to pause today around a Remembrance Memorial, in a church building, or at home to remember all the victims of war on all sides and hope for a world where there are fewer of them.

A fellow Angel – Neil Durling (Club Chaplain).