We will remember them

ONE HUNDRED years ago in 1914, the Great War, also known as the First World War, or World War I, the War to End All Wars began. It ended on November 11, 1918, and later wars proved that after all, it hadn’t been the War to End All Wars. It may even have been the proving ground for the wars to come because it saw, for the first time, the use in war of fighting and bombing aircraft, poison gases, tanks, submarines, barbed wire, flamethrowers, to name a few of the “novelties”.

Millions of men died in this First World War, and millions more in subsequent wars, and they are remembered on Remembrance Day, sometimes called Armistice Day, which is the day that the armistice was signed that ended the First World War, November 11. (In fact, the war officially ended on June 28, 1919, with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles.)

The Moths (Memorable Order of Tin Hats) of Vryheid’s Freedom Shellhole held a parade last week on Remembrance Day, Tuesday, November 11. The parade was held at the cenotaph, which stands in the grounds of St Peter’s Anglican Church in High Street.

A good turn-out of Moths and Friends of the Moths listened solemnly as Old Bill Ian Hazell read the Rolls of Honour, and recited the well-known verse from Laurence Binyon’s poem, “For the Fallen”:

“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.”

The Last Post and Reveille were played and the Moths’ Sgt Major, Danny Hartslief, laid a wreath at the cenotaph, where already, someone else had laid a small bunch of three yellow roses.

The Moths plus some other anonymous person had remembered The Fallen.