Remembrance Sunday

St Aubyns commemorates 102 old pupils Monday 10 November 2008

This article by the Headmaster appeared in the Argus on Thursday, 6th November:

Ninety years ago the ‘war to end all wars’ came to an end at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. The expectations of 1914 had long died in the hearts of the peoples and the grim reality of more than four years of battle had left a deep scar in families, communities and nations. The scale of the sacrifice that a generation had made is hard to appreciate – mere figures scarcely convey the impact of loss.

The rising generation of children see images of distant conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The impact of the casualties that British troops have suffered is at a remove from most children today. The significance of these conflicts in a global war on terror again is hard for young minds to grasp. And yet in most schools throughout Britain Remembrance Day will be given a place, children will be encouraged to wear poppies and teachers will speak about wars in the twentieth century and today.

St Aubyns was founded in 1895 and its chapel was built and consecrated in 1913. One of the earliest surviving photographs of the chapel shows the lying in rest of a former pupil, Henry Chichester, in 1917 and already the roll of honour of war dead can be seen behind the altar. In the First World War 47 St Aubyns pupils died – about one in five of the old boys of the school at that point. Rudyard Kipling’s son, Jack, is perhaps the best known of them. A photograph of the St Aubyns cadets on the beach at Rottingdean on Armistice Day 1918 portrays a commitment to the nation’s cause, but no sense of the school’s loss.

The school chapel in which morning assemblies are held every day remains a memorial to those who died in both World Wars. The 102 names are listed on the roll of honour behind the altar, and their photographs gathered by former Headmasters are displayed at the west end of the chapel. A war memorial in a corner of the playing fields also bears their names.

On Remembrance Sunday senior children will guard the colours at the war memorial and in the chapel prior to our Remembrance Service. Some children will then join the procession to the village War Memorial in Rottingdean and a short Act of Remembrance held there.

Such acts will be replicated across the country and some may ask why this attention is given to an event whose relevance for children may seem small and whose history is grounded in a distant past. To previous generations the events were closer and the commitment not to forget seemed more urgent. Amidst fears of glorifying war or encouraging nationalism, it would be easy to say that the time for Remembrance Day was coming to an end.

Yet there is no doubting the positive impact that year by year Acts of Remembrance have on children of all ages. Connection with the past, a sense of the debt owed and the responsibility to value the freedoms won, the examples of commitment, honour and duty, the pathos of suffering, the pitiful waste of war and the determination to seek for a better world – all of these are valuable lessons which Remembrance Day brings home to young minds. For them the need not to forget is just as important, because we can learn from history, its good and bad examples, its errors and its noble models.

At St Aubyns the service will end with a prayer of commitment in which all the congregation will respond to these words: ‘Let us pledge ourselves anew to the service of God and our fellow man, that we may help, encourage and comfort each other, and support those working for the relief of the needy and for the peace and welfare of the nations.’ If that is the message taken away by the children, then this Remembrance Sunday will more than justified, because the memory of the past will be harnessed for the betterment of the future.