Remembrance Events Words of Remembrance
In commemorative ceremonies it is usual for a speaker to recite a prayer or a reading or a poem as a request for the eventual safety and the eternal peace of those who died in war. The reading of a poem helps the audience to understand the wartime experiences of service men and women. The following hymns, prayers and poems are traditionally used in commemorative ceremonies.
Prayers
The Lord’s Prayer
Prayer of Remembrance
Psalm 23
John 15: 9–14Hymns
“Our God, our help in ages past”
“O valiant hearts”
“Abide with me”
ANZAC On The Wall
by Jim Brown
For The Fallen (1914)
by Laurence Binyon (1869 - 1943)
The Ode is the fourth stanza of “For the Fallen”, a poem written by Laurence Binyon in 1914. The Ode has been recited in ceremonies since 1919, including at the Australian War Memorial’s inauguration in 1929 and at every ANZAC Day and Remembrance Day Ceremony held at the Memorial. These lines should be recited in a respectful manner:
With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.
Solemn in drums thrill: Death august and royal
Signs sorrow up into immortal spheres.
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.
They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.
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.
They mingle not with their laughing comrades again:
They sit no more at familiar tables at home;
They have no lot in our labor of the daytime;
They sleep beyond England's foam.
But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
felt as a wellspring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars that are known to the Night.
As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
to the end, to the end, they remain.
In Flanders fields (1915)
by John McCrae
Colonel John McCrae was a Canadian who served in France as a medical officer during World War I. According to folklore, the poppies sprang from the devastation of war in France and Belgium and were red from the blood of fallen soldiers.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunsets glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe;
To you from failing hands, we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break the faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
We shall keep the faith (1918)
by Moina Michael
American, Moina Michael, read McCrae’s poem and was so moved by it that she wrote a reply poem and decided to wear a red poppy as a way of keeping faith, as McCrae had urged in his poem.
Oh! You who sleep in Flanders Fields,
Sleep sweet – to rise anew!
We caught the torch you threw
And holding high, we keep the Faith
With All who died.
We cherish, too, the poppy red
That grows on fields where valor led;
It seems to signal to the skies
That blood of heroes never dies,
But lends a lustre to the red
Of the flower that blooms above the dead
In Flanders Fields.
And now the Torch and Poppy Red
We wear in honour of our dead.
Fear not that ye have died for naught;
We’ll teach the lesson that ye wrought
In Flanders Fields
The Requiem (1944)
by Charles Bean
ANZAC Requiem originally written by Charles Bean an Australian official correspondent and later official First World War historian in 1944. The Requiem highlights the achievements of all those Australians who died. In his search for rigid accuracy the writer was guided by one deliberate and settled principle. The more he saw and knew of the men and officers of the Australian Imperial Force the more fully did the writer become convinced that the only memorial which could be worthy of them was the bare and uncoloured story of their part in the war. From the moment when, early in the war, he realised this, his duty became strangely simple – to record the plain and absolute truth so far as it was within his limited power to compass it.
On this day, above all days, we remember all those who served our nation in times of war.
We remember with pride their courage, their compassion and their comradeship. We remember what they accomplished for Australia, and indeed for the freedom of mankind.
We honour those who died or were disabled in the tragedy of war. They adorn our nation’s history.
We remember those who fell amidst the valleys and ridges of Gallipoli, on the terraced hills of Palestine, in France and Belgium, on the sands of the North African desert, amidst the mountains and olive groves of Greece, Crete and Syria, in the skies over Europe, in Singapore, in the jungles of Malaysia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and the Pacific Islands, in Korea and Vietnam, in later conflicts and in peacekeeping, in the skies and seas in many parts of the world, and on our own soil and in our sea lanes.
We remember those who suffered as prisoners of war, and those who died in captivity.
We remember staunch friends and allies, especially those who fought alongside us on that first day on Gallipoli in 1915.
Our Servicemen and women have left us a splendid heritage. May we and our successors prove worthy of their sacrifice.
The farmer remembers the Somme (1920)
by Vance Palmer
Will they never fade or pass!
The mud, and the misty figures endlessly coming
In file through the foul morass,
And the grey flood-water ripping the reeds and grass,
And the steel wings drumming.
The hills are bright in the sun:
There’s nothing changed or marred in the
well-known places;
When work for the day is done
There’s talk, and quiet laughter, and gleams of fun
On the old folks’ faces.
I have returned to these:
The farm, and the kindly Bush, and the young
calves lowing;
But all that my mind sees
Is a quaking bog in a mist – stark, snapped trees,
And the dark Somme flowing.
Fifty years Later
Sister Christine Erica Strom
Sister Christine Erica Strom of Rydalmere, NSW, a nurse in the Australian Army Nursing Service, was posted to Greece during the First World War. She enlisted on 12 April 1917 as a staff nurse and embarked from Melbourne aboard RM S Mooltan on 12 June 1917. Fifty years after the war, Strom wrote a poem describing her memories of her nursing service. The poem was included in a collection of her poetry entitled We came in a freighter and other verses, which was published in 1978.
On June the 12th 1917 a large contingent of army
nurses left Melbourne for overseas. We went to
Salonika, in Greece, to staff British hospitals there.
How long ago it seems!
So young we were, with earnest questing eyes
That probed the future for our destiny;
With sense of purpose, and with plans and dreams
Concerning many things.
And then the challenge came: and so we went;
And, looking back across the drift of years,
One would not now have had it otherwise.
So much is clouded now in memory,
But contemplation brings
Some aspects we can share.
Adventures on the way; and all the joys
Of fellowship; the team-work that was there;
The tents; the wards; the boys;
The busy nights and enervating days.
Greece and its ways;
Laughter and fun;
Long conversations when the days were done.
The night-staff gathered in that supper tent,
Their lanterns waiting like so many dogs;
The dixies, and the taste of mutton bird.
The scraps of news we heard:
Rumours and warnings.
The awful misery of winter mornings.
Mail days, and all that letters meant to us;
Long thoughts of home, and matters to discuss;
Depression and despair,
And pillows damp with tears!
The summer heat, and nets above the beds;
The locusts, the mosquitoes, and the frogs;
The wasps that fought with us for marmalade;
Mushrooms, in autumn, thick upon the slopes.
The harassed Heads
Whose rules we thought unjust –
All those mistakes we made!
The pale romances, and the shattered hopes;
Real loss, and quiet grieving.
Pay days, and cash to spend: days off and dust
Upon that winding road.
The smells, the sounds, the sights
Within the ancient city, with its load
Of tragic poverty.
The guns that broke the silence of the nights,
And (how one hears it still!)
The Last Post sounding on that quiet hill.
Winter again …
The mud that followed rain.
The smoke-filled wards; dark days; the driving snow;
The Vardar wind that seemed for ever blowing.
Those large and frozen bottles of quinine!
Then peace, at last;
And soon upon the scene
All those reactions common when a strain,
Long held, has passed.
Then, gradually, the end:
General upheaving;
With friend’s farewell to friend
The patients leaving.
The closing of the wards: sorting and stowing;
How we had longed to go –
And how we hated going!
