When the threat of Nazi Germany was shadowing our shore
When the voice of Neville Chamberlain came on the air to say
"The British Isle is now at war" on that warm September day
I remember, I remember how little lost evacuees
Came invading our school playground, gasmasks banging around their knees
Cheery, sad and poorly clad. We eyed the strangers up and down
Country children, children out of danger, Cockney kids from Canning town.
I remember, I remember - was it fifty years ago?
How everybody pulled together then against the common foe
"Save - not spend" "Make do and mend" and "Dig for victory," they said
How little waste there was in those days, how valuable a loaf of bread.
I remember, I remember, signs of war were everywhere
Army lorries on maneuvers Bienheim bombers in the air,
"Right men! Left men! R.A.F. men. Someones's husband, brother, son.
Off to fight for king and country in the was against the Hun.
I remember, I remember when it wasn't really strange
To see an air-raid warden call and hastily to rearrange
The blackout curtain just in case the man should see a chink of light
Given signals to a German overheard at dead of night
I was just a schoolgirl then and-well, it has to be confessed
I didn't mind, when in the middle of a horrid history test
The air-raid warning went and caused an interruption in the class
As we hurried to a safer place one by one they up and left
Ken and George and Dick and William. Cousin James and brother Jack
All received their call-up papers. Many never did come back.
I remember, I remember just before we went to bed
Standing on the lawn and watching as the distant sky turned red
Not alas t he evening sunset, this was London in the blitz
Only thirty miles from us were people being blown to bits.
I remember, I remember how the chiming of Big Ben
Reverberated around the room as Dad turned on the news again.
Parents thoughtful sombre faces as they heard how planes were lost
Ships torpedoed, soldiers missing, Freedom's terrifying cost.
And again, I remember being frightened as I saw
A "doolebug" come chugging past as O stood rooted to the floor
Watching, waiting at the window, "Please God don't let it stop"
For when the engine coughed and cut out, then the dreadful thing would drop.
O and then I can remember when the darkest days were there
How the British people gathered for a national day of prayer.
Backs were up against a wall and situations such as these
Brings a nation back to God and brings it to its knees
Was the apple blossom booming sweetly on the orchard bough?
Were the Willow and Chestnut lovely as they are now?
Did the bright Clematis gambol gaily around the cottage door?
And did the Blackbird sing it's heart out just as though we weren't at war?
Yes, from what I can remember, as I look back and reflect
Heartbreak, death and devastation on these things have no effect.
God has set the world in motion. Man alone is given a choice
Nature follows his instructions, Man can just ignore his voice.
I remember, I remember that Tuesday on the 8th of May
And how the world was given tidings, "Peace at last, "Twas Victory Day."
Church bells rang, bonfires were lighted. There was dancing in the square
"Now thank we all our God" we sang-and many people left Him there.
Once again we need to gather, crying out, "What have we done,
What has happened to our nation since the war was fought and won.
Then we turned to God to save us in our time of desperate need.
Now men worship other Gods and follow in another creed.
The lessons seem to be forgotten. That is why the memory
Must be preserved if only as the guardian of our liberty
But the words our dear King gave us ,that first Christmas of the war
Still apply to us today as ever did before
"I said to him who I saw standing at the gateway of the year
give me a light so I tread safely in this unknown path I fear"
And he replied "Go in darkness, Place your hand in that of God
It shall be a better light. Safer than any path you've trod."
-Mrs. Rebecca Cook, farm near Hitchen
I have had a few moments this past week, while doing some family history research, to share with a second cousin who I have just discovered. Another post for that. I had for many years a copy of a
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| My grandmother's handwriting at the bottom |
Remembrance card of my great uncle, Private R.J. Broomfield. I must have copied it from something my grandmother or my mother had, but in looking for more Broomfield information I came across some of his personal war-related documents online. I was sobered and sat for a long time looking at them. I love history. I took my mother and my aunt Angela to Belgium to see their father's homeland and to England to see their mother's homeland. Along the way, before we borded the ferry joining the two countries we passed rows and rows of graveyards with simple white crosses and tried to find the war sites in Normandy. But these documents silenced me for a while and I still feel that emotion - reverence! He was a young boy in one census, a young man in another, then there were his enlisting papers and then the war documents citing his death in France or Belgium. I looked up the cemetery and the memorial. My father served in WW II, but never left Newfoundland. We just saw the movie, "The Darkest Hour, " and everything in England speaks to this history, all the memorials, poppies on Remembrance Day, old villages, some of which were leveled and certainly the destruction in London. Fathers and brothers and uncles were lost. When I brought my mother to England a distant
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| Greta as a young girl |
relative in Leigh-on-Sea talked about Queenie, who ran a round helping people with a tin pan on her head for protection. When we lived in Guernsey we lived 10 miles off the coast of France. Guernsey was occupied by the Germans for five years. People we know were evacuated as children. There are still "V"s on some homes that indicated they had been occupied by Germans and some of the V's have laurel leaf V's below them that indicate "Victory." Greta S. read the above poem in church on Remembrance Day in November. She prefaced it telling us that she had tried to come up with something to say and it wasn't working and then her daughter found this poem and it said everything she would have wanted to say. I might add, we love, love, love Greta. We love to sit by her coal fire in her little cottage on the crook of the road.and just talk. I wanted to buy the cottage across the street. When we left her home, eighty-nine year old Greta would go out and look for cars for us and try and stop traffic. She had a wonderful sense of humor. We raced to finish the Book of Mormon together and we were going to go to lunch. The elders "practice taught" her with new missionaries and for awhile it really spiritually supported Greta. She came back to church about the same time we landed on the shores of Guernsey and left just before we left. I am not sure I have felt such sadness. I literally wept for a couple of days. We didn't want to loose anyone and it was a constant "battle." Baptize one and one would leave. One member Shirley Greaves did a lot to comfort me, telling me that they aren't like us. They don't go to the church on the corner their whole lives (I didn't either). Greta wanted a large, old church to go to for peace. I said she really wanted a temple, although the temple was confusing to her. I visited with Greta and took her a flowers and a poinsettia before we left. We visited with Greta and prayed with Greta before we left and I still cried. Greta is eighty-nine years old and doesn't act a day older than me, in fact she acts younger than I do, as she swims 30 minutes every day, and still drives on the narrow roads of Guernsey, at least during the day and would drive people home from church. One day she took Brenda J, home from church after Sacrament meeting and told the missionaries they were going to the "pub." I had to talk to Brenda and tell her she was being a bad influence. I love, love Brenda too. We are kindred spirits and she could be my older sister. She told me tonight she looks younger than I do. Greta was evacuated from a park as a child and lived for five years with her family in England. In fact her father was one of the last to leave Alderney (which later became a prisoner of war camp) and the family landed in three waves on England. Her older sister was pregnant at the time and eventually her mother got them all together for the five occupation years and then they returned to Guernsey. So this poem was Greta's Remembrance Day talk and she read this tiny print with such feeling and spirit. And I have thought a great deal about the war, and all those that were either relocated or died. We don't see the effects of ward in America, although those who loose sons and daughters and fathers, and parts of their bodies or feel emotional trauma see and feel the effects of war. I can't even imagine loosing one family members to war let alone more than one and neighbors and friends. Nothing more to be said, except I will always miss Greta and family and war and England has definitely given me reason to reflect and be grateful for so many things. I have always loved Remembrance Day. I even have a poppy to wear in Utah. "Lest we forget!"
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| War Memorial is at Villers-Bretonneux |
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| Death in battle record |
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| Inscription on War Memorial |
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