Preaching at the Monmouthshire Regiment Memorial Service for the World War 1 Battle of Fresenburg Ridge, Canon Leigh Richardson CF(v), Chaplain of the Royal Monmouthshire RE(Militia) spoke of the great losses endured in one day.
Padre Richardson said:
It is good to be here with you this afternoon for such an important commemoration when we have opportunity to come together to give thanks to the God who delivered us and to remember the brave who laid down their lives for their loved ones and for their country.
And above all others, we owe it to the comrades’ associations and the RBL for keeping this in our memory each year, and for all they and other bodies do to help those who still suffer as the result of war – we say thank you to them – because they have remained true to their promise, that:
“at the going down of the sun and in the morning – we will remember them”
And the pain and grief of wars are still strong in the hearts of many today – some still mourning the loss of loved ones who never returned from the two world wars, but still more raw will be those who have lost recently. Since the end of the Second World War there have only been two years in which no Armed Forces personnel were killed on operations, that was 1968 and last year, 2016. The thirteen years of Op Herrick, the Army’s campaign in Afghanistan saw 404 personnel killed in action not to mention the 2,116 who were admitted to field hospitals many of whom suffered life changing injuries. 2009 saw the highest numbers of casualties with 95 personnel killed in action. And so the grieving and remembrance will continue.
And the tributes for the fallen are heart-wrenching – ‘Lovingly remembered,’ ‘Too many happy memories to be forgotten,’ Died as he had lived – loved by all,’ ‘Cofion annwylaf.’
Siegfried Sassoon, the famous war poet said – “The song was wordless/ The singing will never be done” And that’s really what today is all about isn’t it.
The fateful 8th of May 1915 which saw the 3rd Battalion The Mons fighting amongst their comrades of the 1st and 2nd battalions the first time on the Ypres Salient. They hadn’t gone oversees with the Welsh Division, but had been mobilised as independent battalions in support of regular regiments. The 1st Battalion had a company supporting the Canadians on their right of the Ypres Salient, the rest of the 1st and the 3rd were holding the 28th Division’s front line and the 2nd were on the left flank with the 4th Division. If you can imagine this defensive line squeezing as it withdraws closer to Ypres and the front line is shortened leaving the 1st and 3rd Battalions exposed as the 4th Division leaves to cover the Canadian’s withdrawal. Frezenberg ridge overlooks Ypres around 7.5 kms away – a strategic piece of land which is key to dominating the lowland beyond and the ports to the north – the German attack on the 8th is fierce with field artillery pounding the allied defensive positions – both the 1st and 3rd Battalions are virtually annihilated – by the end of the day, the survivors of both companies barely amounted to a single war strength company – but they had put up a splendid fight – and B Company of the 3rd earned special distinction by holding on in the front line – their stand has been picked out by the Official History of the War as ‘among the historic episodes of the war.’
So reduced were the battalions that on the 22nd May 1915 orders were issued for their temporoary amalgamation – the strength of the amalgamated unit being about 900 – nearly two thirds coming from the 2nd Battalion. Its possible that a total of 85 men from Newport alone were killed during the action at Frezenberg on the 8th May – sons, brothers, fathers, husbands – hardly a street was untouched by the tragedy.
102 long years have come and gone since that fateful day in 1915 – and when the guns fell silent in 1918, we promised that no such world wide atrocity would be committed again. Within twenty years of Armistice Day, the battle drums were beating across Europe and would soon spread to another World War. So how far have we come, what have we learned in those 102 years. Have the deaths of the fallen been in vain, or did they bring about a new world order, a united world, a world united against injustice? Since the end of the Second World War, our armed forces have been deployed in numerous major conflicts – Korea, N.Ireland, Falklands, Iraq and Afghanistan to name but a few and as peace keepers in the Middle East, Cyprus, parts of Africa, the Balkans – the list goes on and on.
So what about this world that we live in – is a safer, better place? Well outwardly, we’ve never had it so good; our standard of living is high, we all have gadgets around the house – those of you who own your own houses never imagined that they could be worth so much in 2017. Our old folk live longer because of the advances in medicine and the brilliance of our doctors.
But there is a hardness and viciousness about our society that has not been known for centuries. There is terrifying lawlessness; terrorism and terrorist plots, mugging, thuggery, rape and child abuse are seemingly everywhere – so in answer to my own question – is it a better world, no its not. It’s a TV social media world because that’s where we learn it all and celebrity they say is the new religion.
But there is a pointlessness about it all – a lack of purpose – of vision – we are a nation adrift, lost in the mighty universe. And what can we say to it all? What hope is there? Is there any hope?
I want to be bold enough to suggest to you that the Bible has something to say about it all. The old fashioned bible – that neglected coffee table book – but to those who believe, it is the word of God! Anyway, I found a chapter, way back in the Book of Exodus which could have been written for us today – ‘and the Lord said to Moses, “Leave this place, go up to the land I promised you – I will drive out the people of the land – go up to the land flowing with milk and honey. But I will not go with you because you are a stiff necked (obstinate) people and I might destroy you on the way! When the people heard these words they began to mourn.”
Now Moses used to take a tent and pitch it outside the camp, some distance away and call it the tent of meeting. Chaplains on Operations do similar things although because the danger it is always in the camp – my church on the Engineer camp at the Contingency Operating Base in Basra was named St. Wilfrid’s in the Sands – and as I’m sure you all know that St. Wilfrid was the founder of Ripon Cathedral – Ripon being one many homes of the Engineers. As in Moses day, anyone wanting to go to pray would go to the tent, and when Moses himself went out to the tent to pray everyone waited to hear what God had said to him. And we’re told that Moses prayed to the Lord, ‘Teach me your ways, so that I may continue to find favour with you. And the Lord said, ‘My presence shall go with you and I will give you rest.’
Very often the things we read in the bible can be paralleled with our own experience and things that are going on today
“Go up to the land I promised you but I will not be with you,” God said.
What words! What is the use of having everything in life that is good – if God is not with us?
And that’s the heart of our trouble today – we have in many ways reached our promised land – outwardly – we have never had it so good, we are so much better off than our fathers, grandfathers great grandfathers were – but the whole thing has turned sour in our mouths. Why? I will not go with you. That’s our trouble, ‘You are a stiff necked, rebellious and obstinate people – and I will not go with you’. We have accepted the gifts and not the giver, Days, months, years we have left him out and ignored him – and its been infused throughout our society, through our political system right down to our communities. And I have no doubt that our emptiness and our drifting and our deep unhappiness, if the truth be told, are because we have lost sight of God, and it’s a dreadful thing to lose sight of your beacon.
We have wonderful standards here today and many more battle colours laid up in this chapel here, and the whole point of the colours was that they could be seen on the battlefield and were the rallying point in the fog of war – one of the worst thing that could happen to a regiment was that the colours be taken, and so if you were an infanteer and had become separated from the body of your unit you could rally on the colours when the bugler sounded – the rank Colour sergeant was created in 1813 to protect the ensign who carried the colours because the most bitter fighting often took place around them. In the Crimean War, once battle had been joined the colour party were sent to the rear because they endured such heavy losses at the front. Colours ceased to be carried into battle in 1881.
You can imagine the disorientation of battle and losing all sense of direction, without the colours to rally on, there is a pointlessness to your engagement because without organisation, you will lose.
It’s the same for you and me – God is our standard, our colour and without him, we are lost in the battle, ensued by a sense of pointlessness.
“I will not go with you,” God has said to us. You may have never heard Him – but to those of us who study these things and listen to his voice we know it. We are further from God as a nation than we have been for a thousand years, and so we need to retrace our steps as individuals and as a nation to that place/that point where we lost the companionship of God.
So in the story of Moses, what happens next, well the people when they heard that God was not going with them, they began to mourn – what for? Well they felt sorry for having neglected God, for having turned their backs on him, they were sorry and they said so. And that’s what many of us won’t do. We’re happy with the outward success that we have, comfortable job, nice car, we won’t submit to God we say, “why should we?” and the simple answer to that is, because God is God! And its all the more clear to us, because we know that God sent his Son Jesus – and even the Son we have spurned. “You go up to your land flowing with milk and honey,” God said, “I will not go with you.”
Moses knew that milk and honey was not substitute for God and so they mourned over their sins and said sorry.
So they realised that God wasn’t with them, then they were sad for neglecting him and said sorry and then they prayed. Do you pray? If not why not? On Op Telic 11 the frequency and closeness of the rocket attacks meant that there were few people who didn’t send the odd prayer up. The RQ thought that the Padre provided ultimate top cover for the regiment as if I had access to legions of angels who would knock rockets out of the sky. I do believe that we were protected, but the angels were called phalanx and fired 4,500 rounds a minute! Why do we leave prayer until the last minute when we reach a crisis point? Because at that point we don’t know what to say – its like being given a radio without having had any signals training. Its all gibberish unless we know what to say and what to ask for. And Moses prayed for God to teach him his ways – Teach me your ways – and this is what he means, show me what to do, the way I should think, react, live. Moses got to the point in all this that he was willing for God to do anything with him, if only he could see his face again, if only he could be reassured by his presence. And God speaks to him maybe the loveliest words in the whole bible. “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”
We have not entered into that world which those young men on Frezenberg Ridge died to win for us, because we have tried to build it without God, and because we have lost sight of the colours in the midst of the battle, our world has become a disoriented, topsy turvey world. And we need to pray earnestly, pray like we have never prayed before, for those Colours to be raised again, Christ’s colours, and even now we might hear those words: “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”
“And all manner of things shall be well.”
Read Full Post »
St Mary's Priory Church, Abergavenny 