2 minute silences are much longer than they sound.

For the first 30 seconds I get tangled up in meta; thinking about not thinking, being silent but trying to be not thinking about thinking about being silent. I wonder how everyone else’s minds are turning and assume that they are all in a more refined state of quiet; reflective, profound and respectful.

I am a rubbish meditator. 

The next 30 seconds my brain populates with ‘what ifs?’ What if I cough, what if someone faints, did I turn my phone off? Would it be wrong to check that I have? Who wrote the Last Post? (This is lost to history) Gosh, imagine playing it and messing it up. Suddenly I am transported back to having to play the national anthem on my recorder to a silent assembly at school.

Another 30 seconds and I am still not reflecting on “those who shall not grow old as we that are left grow old,” and the time is ticking down….

I never really paid much attention to Remembrance Sunday, which is a little odd I guess given that three of my fathers have served in the Royal Navy. A grandfather in the army and a great grandfather in a cavalry regiment who took his own horse, Bill, to France in WW1. All of them have carried profound wounds long after their time in service ended.

After being made to learn and recite Dulce Et Decorum Est by my English teacher at school, I was always a bit afraid to wear a poppy, lest it should some how suggest I was a supporter of war or glorified death in battle. There is the option to wear a white poppy, but does the moral statement of wearing it somehow take attention away from the point of remembrance?

Explorer Scouts

I have been an Explorer leader for a year now, and this November was my first remembrance parade alongside our Unit. It was bucketing down with rain, but they all came. No coats. Their uniforms darkening as they soak through. Teenagers, voluntarily getting up early on a Sunday morning to stand in the wet to remember people they never met?

Before the parade we meet in the bus station with various clusters of smart looking people. At the front the band, followed by silver haired military chaps with medals and ladies with smooth buns and wool coats. The army cadets are all perfectly turned out and organised in lines and having orders barked at them. I spot one of my Scouts in Multi Terrain Pattern uniform, he acknowledges me with a tiny eye movement then looks back firmly to his flag his mouth in a straight line. 

Near the back of the line there is a melee of teenagers wearing greenish shirts and neckerchiefs, giving each other piggy backs and cackling at their mega polished mates over in the cadets. They’re my lot. But, as we begin the walk to the parade and I have nudged a few to tuck their shirts in and stop holding hands, they change. They are now a tidy unit of young people, walking solemnly together. None of the usual giggles and shrieks. 

I walk behind them, watching.

“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.” – Laurence Binyon

As a parent and a scout leader, I looked on them with pride but also felt a desperate wrench; knowing that a quarter of a million children under 18 slipped past the unscrupulous recruiting sergeants to fight and die in the First World War. And who dares think how many have since?

We enter the church and take a pew. A 5 year old squirrel scout in scarlet careers up the nave. They were so little I could only see a mop of blonde hair and the tip of their flagpole bounding along complete with acorn finial. Next came beavers, cubs, scouts, one of our explorers and various cadets bearing their standards. I pass back a few paper poppies for our poppy-less Explorers. One handed me a 10 pence piece “in case you forgot money for the collection!” I had, of course, forgotten. 

Drying our flag afterwards

As we file out I ask a few of them what it is that makes them come to the remembrance service every year? 

“I want people to see us, and see that we care.”

“I get to go on the iron and be smart.”

“So we can show we can be serious.”

“I want people to know what Scouting does for the community and get more people to join.”

One asks me where we are supposed to be going. Pause. I have no idea, this being my first such assemblage. Luckily there was a Beaver scout colony stomping confidently towards the town centre so we followed them. I only managed to lose one: Our flag bearer who ended up in the wrong place, marching back through town with all the army cadets. She probably didn’t do it intentionally.

The Last post and the list of the fallen are sounded. Local names. Names of fathers and sons lost across both World Wars. I don’t know how you recover when your entire family is wiped out. A girl guide faints halfway through the silence and is quickly scooped up and brought back by a ripple of concerned friends and the local GP.

With about 15 seconds to go I’m finally settled into the silence, my thoughts stirred by the dedicated young people around me. Coming together and Remembering sacrifice, paying tribute to people and acknowledging innocent loss of life makes us consider one another in an intentional way. Just like the Scout law does, I suppose. 

Ironed Shirt.