Pastoral Letter
Dear Friends,
I HAVE JUST COME BACK from the Ely Diocesan Clergy Conference, which this time was held in a Roma Catholic Seminary in northern France. On our free afternoon we were privileged to be able to travel Ieper in Belgium to visit the truly amazing and moving 'In Flanders Fields' museum. I am sure that you know that the city was entirely destroyed during the first world war when half a million servicemen died fighting over a small patch of territory in the Flanders fields.
At 8.00am on 4th August 1914, following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir apparent to the throne of the Austria-Hungarian Empire, the German army invaded Belgium, dragging Britain into war. Following heavy fighting, the Belgium army was forced to retreat towards the coast until they took their stand at Ieper, joined by the British and French armies, augmented, as the months wore on, by armies from many parts of the British Empire.
The First World War highlighted above all the ascendancy of the machine gun over massed infantry attacks, as one account put it "three men and a machine gun can stop a battalion of heroes". Consequently, the battles soon stagnated into trench warfare as the infantry sought refuge from the pitiless destruction of the machine gunners. With heavy rain bogging down artillery, and their barrages often inaccurate, infantry often had to 'go over the top' to face terrible fire from the opposing machine gunners, and little progress was made at the cost of countless lives. Then, on 22ndApril 1915, poison gas was used for the first time by the Germans, adding a new awful dimension to the slaughter.
In June 1917 the British decided to launch the greatest of their various offensive attacks. They set off a total of 19 huge underground explosions deep under the German trenches, which caused entire German battalions to be buried alive, and the reverberations to be felt as far away as London. One charge failed to explode and still remains underground. Unaccountably the British high command then decide not to follow up that devastating attack with an infantry attack until the following month (some say it was because the charges were set off by accident), by which time the Germans had regrouped. What followed became known as the Battle of Passendale, which cost the British 300,000 men - dead, missing or wounded.
Every evening at 8.00pm the last post is sounded under the imposing memorial arches of the Menin Gate in Ieper, on which is inscribed the names of all those soldiers who died in the Flanders fields whose bodies have never been found. Their bodies are dug up from time to time even today as excavations take place in the area, and farmers still plough up unexploded ammunition and gas shells.
The conflict is summed up very movingly in the poem 'In Flanders Fields' by John McCrae:
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep,
though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
The Museum is a sensitive, moving and awe-inspiring record of the impact of the battles in Flanders fields, and I feel that anyone visiting it will inevitably be moved by the awful conditions that faced the young men of our country who fought there. As I examined the description of the slaughter, I began to feel that God too was deeply moved by the carnage as he looked on at man waging war on man and the pointless loss of young vibrant lives.
I feel it is so important to continue to remember those who lost their lives in both world wars, and in many other conflicts since, on Remembrance Sunday. God would want us to, and to try and learn some lessons from the pointless nature of those conflicts. So I hope you will join me and the other clergy who will be leading services in our Benefice on November 12th to 'Remember them' and to pray for a better world.
God bless you all,