I love villages that have maintained their historical feel while finding a place in the modern world. Lavenham in Suffolk is a good example not far away from where we now live, but one of my favourite places is Dent in north Yorkshire. The village is accessed along single-track roads and can be a nightmare to navigate either on foot or in the car with coaches and lorries squeezing through the narrow, cobbled streets. The village sits six miles away from the Cumbrian town of Sedbergh and is beautiful and whenever I go there, it feels as though I am stepping back in time, if ever you are in the area, I recommend a visit.
On one of my earliest experiences of Dent, I wandered into the Church and spotted the war memorial, I was staggered when I read that twenty of their young men had died in the first world war, looking at this tiny community, I could only imagine how devastating the loss of so many young men must have been. Over the years I have become increasingly interested in the impact of the two world wars on communities and I now understand that these deaths would have been from the whole parish and not just from a single village and having gained a greater understanding of how volunteers were recruited my initial perception feels to be better informed now.
At the outbreak of the first world war Lord Kitchener, the secretary of State for war believed that the only way to win the war was to recruit as many men as possible as quickly as they could and set about a process of conscription. General Sir Henry Rawlinson suggested that men would be more likely to enroll if they were to serve alongside people they knew and as a result “The Pals Battalions” were established. Whilst I can’t be certain that this was the case in places like Dent, it seems reasonable to assume that the lads from the local community could well have served alongside their pears in places like the Somme. The problem was that if the battalion suffered with heavy losses, their hometowns and villages lost significant numbers of their young men, with a devastating cost to the local community.
During November each year we have an opportunity to remember the young men who gave their lives so that we might live in freedom. I find it humbling that a lot of the fallen had only just reached maturity and I think of the utter waste we encounter in times of war. Today, I look at the cities in Ukraine, destroyed by warfare and the huge numbers of people whose lives have been destroyed by this current war. Week by week in Churches we pray for peace, and I believe that real peace will only be achieved when love becomes the agenda, rather than hatred, a hunger for power, supremacy, and self-interest.
This weekend we mark the lives of those who fell during the two world wars, and we now add in those who have died in more recent conflicts and it seems to me that their lives were lost needlessly if we that are left behind don’t strive for peace and live peaceful lives.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.