The 11th Hour of the 11th Day of the 11th Month

On Sunday morning, we, as a family, will head off to our community Remembrance Day service. We will gather with others, in the large community building, adjacent the Cenotaph Gardens. There will be hundreds of us ... all seats will be filled and a standing room only crowd will line up the walls. There we will wait until we hear the haunting sound of the bagpipe drone, signalling the start of the procession into the building; a parade of service groups of all types, including the wee Cubs and Brownies, the Police and Fire Services and of course, representation from across our military services. They will be lead by a Colour Guard of members who have served.

We will listen to ministrations and prayers from representatives across all of our Faith communities. We will hear of the history of wars past. We will listen to the voices of choirs and we will lift our own voices.

Then again the drone of the pipes and the rat-a-tat of the drums will signal that it is time for us to rise. Following the the Colour Guard procession, we will proceed to the Cenataph Garden where just before 11 AM, a lone trumpeter will raise his horn and sound The Last Post. At the 11th hour, of the 11th Day, in the 11th Month, we will bow our heads and remember, with two minutes of silence,  those who served and those who died. The end of our silence will be marked by the poignant sound of the trumpeter playing The Lament. 

Later a list of the names of the soldiers from our community, who served and died in long past wars, will be read. The sheer number of the names in comparison to the size of our community tells of the magnitude of the loss in those dark times. 

During this time, I will look across the Cenataph grounds, with pride and love in my heart and a tear in my eye, at our SiL, who will be standing tall and straight, the flag he has been honoured to carry, firmly planted in front of him, the somber stoicism on his face reflecting his own remembrances of comrades lost in far away places. He is representative of the new generation of veterans ... those who served and those who lost their lives, in the service of our great country ... names that will be read and who will be remembered in the 11th hour, of the 11th day in the 11th month in the years to come.