On this essentially military occasion, and  as a civilian who has never had to face a shot fired in anger, nor myself  taken offensive action in war, I confess to feeling somewhat diffident about speaking to you today.
However, I have had quite a lot of what one might call indirect experience of war and it's consequences.  As a teenager, I was driven around in tanks in near Fallingbostel in  North Germany, as a member of  the  school's cadet force on a two day visit to the Royal Tank Regiment. We thought we were preparing for 2 years of National Service, but I was not called up for that before it was abolished in 1960. 
It was not far from the notorious Belsen concentration camp where 50K people were murdered. So I got an insight into what we were fighting for. 
The Argentine Cemetery at Goose Green in the Falklands where 230 lie  buried. These were young men many of whom we now know from those who survived the Conflict, did not really  know where they were  what they were fighting for. 
And I've attended Remembrance services at cemeteries  in Malaysia,   Japan ( where they were  all prisoners who died from disease and neglect), 
In Arizona in  the USA for young pilots killed in training.  
And I've visited Ypres in Flanders to see the Menin Gate at Ypres.  Dedicated to British and Commonwealth Soldiers, 54896.  They were just the people who were never found. The scale of the killing is unimaginable in to-days world. 
20 million dead in World War 1 and 70 million dead as a result of World War 2.  Staggering unimaginable numbers.  Yet,  If joseph Stalin was right about one thing it was his assertion that " the death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic. " 
Yet these huge numbers make few people weep.  They are difficult to fathom without faces. 
That is why to me anyway a  relatively few names  on memorials at Guilsborough or other villages in our benefice aret that much more comprehensible.  We didn't know those names but we share the land where they lived.  

" Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here obedient to their laws we lie " 
" When you go home tell them of us and say for your tomorrow we gave our today. " 
 Written in about 400BC by an ancient Greek poet Simonides about whom we know little, and would know less if he had not been mentioned by the historian Herodotus. 


 Soldier and diplomat in the train. 
Snorkeleers in Australia and Remebbrance. Food for thought ever since in the 2 minute silence time. 
Stalin: One man's death is a tragedy; 
 Falklands conflict trying to bring this country and Argentina together after it had cost the lives of 255 British and 650 Argentines. 
Royal British Legion 100[th] Anniversary
The cemeteries row, rules and  and gravestones. 
Menin Gate and World War 1 battlefields. (Ypres) 
Stalin's view
Individuals mean most ot us not the millions. 
Private's story. To end. 



