Hilary was telling me on Thursday that they have just added the latest name to the War Memorial in Scunthorpe - a boy who went through school with her son, Richard, and who was killed in Iraq earlier this year.

In Swallow at 11 o'clock today we held our annual Remembrance Service at our War Memorial on which are just three names - all from the Great War. On this occasion young Brendan (16), who is in the cadets, laid the wreath accompanied by his sergeant while Tom (13 this week) tolled the church bell 11 times. Brendan is just three years younger than the young officer, son of the Rector, whose name heads the short list of names, and already older than he would have been when the war started. My natural response is always 'what a needless waste', and I think of the words of a young officer in the same regiment as my grandfather, of the same rank, born in the same year and of a similar social background.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Wilfred Owen

And then I think of an even more cruel waste a quarter of a century later. I watched a television play the other week about the relief of Belsen. My uncle, my father's brother, was one of the first soldiers into that camp. Another uncle, my mother's brother, was a young doctor with the British forces working in Germany in the aftermath of the war - I don't know where, but as a pediatrician his work would have been with the most innocent victims of all.

What happened in Germany under the nazis probably comes as close as anything in the history of mankind to justifying war, though it was not the reason given at the time, but in that war as in others even to the present day, it is right that we remember those who died or were injured in the service of their country whatever our feelings of righteous indignation against those politicians who bring those wars about.

Today's ceremony was beautifully led by Bob Davies who lives in the village and was formerly with the Mission to Seamen. We have a service sheet with the briefest of ceremonies which in most years has preceded a dash to Croxby for the regular communion service, delayed by twenty minutes or so to accomodate Swallow's Cenotaph ceremony.

This year our regular pattern of services has been changed because of the interregnum and Bob expanded the service to include two readings - one from Psalms and the Beatitudes - plus a short talk and getting us to sing O God Our Help in Ages Past as well as the National Anthem, which we always sing. Bob has always been a great asset as one of the people who read the lesson with his huge enthusiasm and sincerity making even the most difficult Old Testament reading immediate and new, and he brought this to today's ceremony giving something which no priest in my memory has quite achieved.

Let us remember before God, and commend to his sure keeping:
those who have died for their country in war;
those whom we knew and whose memory we treasure;
and all who have lived and died in the service of mankind.

Lieutenant CECIL WALTER HENRY ASKEY
8th Battalion Lincolnshire Regiment
Who died in the Great War, aged 19 on 5th April 1918
The son of the Rev’d A.H.Askey and Mrs. Askey

Gunner WALTER DAY (821200)
"B" Battery. 155th Brigade, Royal Field Artillery
Who died in the Great War on 25th September 1918
The husband of Charlotte Day and father of Cyril Walter Day

Stoker KERDON WILKIN (297698)
H.M.S. "Coquette."
Who died in the Great War aged 33 on 7th March 1916
Born 1883, the son of Thomas William and Sarah Wilkin

We will remember them.