At the going down of the sun and in the morning…

we will remember them.

As raindrops hung like tears from the beech tree in the churchyard, and even the squirrels, gathering their winter stores, paused at the poppyfield as if they, too, understood, hundreds of people, both uniformed and civilians from the community and from the Priory congregation gathered.

To remember.

Remembrance Sunday 2023 was marked the first Great Malvern Priory and Malvern Town Council Joint Service of Remembrance. The Mayor read from the ‘Malvern Psalm’ Psalm 121 - ‘I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help’.

Rod spoke movingly of his grandfather Geoffrey’s experiences as a Prisoner of War in Burma. Rod’s voice faltered as he shared a newly-uncovered letter written by his father, then aged just 15, to his own dad. ‘I’m looking after mum and we’re going to the pictures’. He would never see him again. Yet he was able to forgive.

Prayers for peace, hymns, an anthem from the Choir, a minute’s silence, the National Anthem and the civic party left the Priory to march to the town War Memorial at the Library.

To the distant sound of a bass drum, a sizeable Priory congregation remained for the Litany of Peace and the Act of Remembrance, marked by a lone bugler, at the Priory War Memorial.

The congregation at the 8am Book of Common Prayer Communion heard the words of John McCrae’s haunting, still shockingly apposite poem, ‘In Flander’s Fields’ -

…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 sunset glow,

As a congregation we pray for peace.

’Go in peace to love your neighbour
Go in power to work for reconciliation
Go in hope to proclaim the resurrection’
Amen