Father Forgive

"Wear your poppy with pride," they told me. But all I feel is sorrow and loss.  One hundred years after the guns of the Great War fell silent, my family still bears the scars... and we got off very lightly; very lightly indeed.

My great uncle Dan paid the highest price. Conscripted into the East Yorkshire Regiment, he was killed in France on April 23rd, 1917. His body lies we know not where, but he will be remembered tomorrow, along with 34,816 of his colleagues, at the Arras Memorial. What a tragic waste!

My grandfather Elijah was badly wounded in the Great War but didn't succumb to his injuries until 1926 – too late for my grandmother to claim a widow's pension. Fortunately for her, she must have had some influential friends (my family wasn't dragged up!) and she secured a post with the Cunard Line, sailing in the Mauritania II and later the Caronia. But that left my dad at home, mostly in the care of aunts. Consequently he grew up not knowing the love of a father or mother and was always the poorer for it.

Hindsight is such a wonderful thing. With hindsight, we see that the burning desire for retribution, and the reparations required of the German nation after the Great War, contributed in no small part to hyper-inflation, terrible hardship and a rise in Nationalism that would see the Nazi Party swept into power. Whatever we may think of the European Union, and the Common Market before it, let us at least acknowledge that it was built on the desire that its founding states would never go to war again.

Real peace – lasting peace – only comes when hatred is defeated by forgiveness; when former enemies become friends; when Americans and Europeans can buy Japanese and German cars without a twinge of conscience. It only comes when all concerned realise that there is far more to lose through war than to gain.

A few years ago I stood in the bombed-out ruins of the old Coventry Cathedral. There in the stonework at the east end are engraved two words – Father Forgive. I don't mind admitting that I cried when I saw it. And tomorrow, as the Last Post is sounded in our little parish church, I know I will cry again.