12th November – Remembrance Sunday

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Remembrance Sunday is the second Sunday of November and ceremonies are held throughout the country in churches, cenotaphs and war memorials.

We had a knock on the door at 8 am, a reminder that our car was parked on the route of the parade and needed moving. It was chilly out.
Remembrance Sunday
At 10:15 dignitaries paraded from the Guildhall to St Helen’s Church, and after a service inside joined the crowd of people already standing round the war memorial in the Square shortly before 11am.
Remembrance Sunday
They were joined at both services by soldiers from Dalton Barracks, who not only join the community at Abingdon but send teams to ceremonies round the region.
Remembrance Sunday
Many different uniformed groups took part. On Remembrance Sunday, Scouts are expected to attend and give the troop priority over their other Sunday sporting activities.
Remembrance Sunday
So at 11 Abingdon paused to pay its respects to those who lost their lives in conflict. The ‘Last Post’ was played by Abingdon Town Band member, Alison Rich, to mark the start of the two minute silence at 11. She then sounded the ‘Reveille’. After which The Deputy Lord-Lieutenant, Mrs Felicity Dick; the Mayor of Abingdon, Councillor Jan Morter; MP for Abingdon and Oxford West, Layla Moran, the Royal British Legion and many other organisations laid wreaths of red poppies at the memorial.
Remembrance Sunday
The poppy is the symbol of the Day of Remembrance because many years ago poppies grew from the the choppy earth where troops had fallen.

Remembering is the process of ‘Bringing the past into the present’… But who now can remember what it was like to live in the trenches of WWI? Only through war poetry have those memories become part of our collective consciousness …

Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz–
The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?
Do you remember the rats; and the stench
Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench–
And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain?
(lines from a poem by Siegfried Sassoon called Aftermath)
Remembrance Sunday
Finally there is a march along the High Street to the County Hall. People, who could not squeeze into the Square,cheered as the band, the troops and uniformed groups marched by.

One innovation this year, and a sign of the times after recent terrorist attacks by vehicles driven into crowds, was that a tractor, and land rover were parked at strategic points – as crash barriers.

11th November – Armistice Day at the war memorial

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11th November - Armistice Day
The First World War, which had begun on 28th July 1914, ended this day, ninety nine years ago, on 11th November 1918.

This war involved the great world powers of the time. Over 9 million combatants died, and many millions more were permanently disabled. Over 7 millions civilians across Europe and other war zones were killed. Many millions more were injured, and made homeless as a result of the war to end all wars.

Hostilities ended at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 with the signing of the Armistice. And so at that hour today people gathered round the war memorial in Abingdon for a minute silence.

The formal Remembrance Day ceremony is tomorrow.
11th November - Armistice Day
Scattered around the war memorial somebody had laid wool poppies, one for each named person on the war memorial. People were invited to take one.
11th November - Armistice Day
Here is the one for A W Carter next to his gravestone at Abingdon’s Old Cemetery.
11th November - Armistice Day
A report from the Reading Mercury of 8th January 1916 tells of his funeral.

Bridge Closure

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Health and Safety
At lunchtime today, town council staff closed the Ock Valley Walk having been informed of a Health and Safety risk on the bridge at the town end.
Health and Safety
People will now walk down the alternative route along Ock Street and breath in all those traffic fumes. Let us hope the closure is not for too long.

Cemetery angels

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Cemetery angels
Laced with algae, pearled by lichen, an angel is asleep over a grave with the words … ‘Cherished memories – our darling little daughter’.
Cemetery angels
From the era that first imagined Peter Pan a young angel looks down on another grave.
Cemetery angels
Frozen in time, these three stone angels guard graves in the Old Cemetery in Abingdon.

Last Sunday at Trinity the annual townwide bereavement service took place, and there was a stone angel pictured on the Trinity facebook page. At the service people were invited to light a candle for a loved one.