Color Me November 8

The color story for November 8 is red; specifically the red of the poppies that grew in Flanders Field.

Today, in the United Kingdom, it is Remembrance Sunday. On this day ceremonies are held throughout the land, and indeed the Commonwealth, to remember those who served their country in the two World Wars and later conflicts. It is held on the second Sunday in November, the Sunday nearest to Armistice Day (November 11). In London very solemn events take place at the Cenotaph on Whitehall as the Queen and many members of the royal family along with current and retired service members gather to pay their respects and remember the fallen.

You may be wondering why I am choosing to focus on a day important to the UK. My maternal grandparents emigrated from England to New Zealand so they could be married and begin a new life. Many decades later I traveled back to the UK (although not as an immigrant) and while living there met and married my American husband. Later our two sons were born in the UK. Hopefully, that explains my affiliation.

As the sun was setting today I was photographing this set-up in grateful recognition of the service of: my Grandfather, James Patrick Coughlan (upper photo) who served in World War I including the landing of the Anzacs on April 25, 1915 and my Father, James William Coughlan (lower photo) who served in World War II in the Pacific theatre. Thankfully, they both survived the war (or I would not be here to write this!) but their service and that of their comrades who did not return should never be forgotten.

There are several well-known poems written about service in that most terrible of wars, The Great War, and I would like to close with an excerpt from one:

They shall not grow 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.

This is the fourth stanza taken from the poem For the Fallen penned by Robert Laurence Binyon (1869 - 1943) and published in The Times on September 21, 1914. Binyon was sitting on the North Cornish Coast a few weeks after the outbreak of World War I, reflecting on the Batttle of Mons (August 23), the Battle of Le Cateau (August 26) and the first Battle of Marne (September 5 - 9). Although it is the fourth stanza in his finished work it was these four lines that came to him first.

Lest we forget.