Germany, Britain, Two wars, Rememberence and living with a shared history.

What follows is the text my address to seminar looking at, Britain and Germany: Our Shared History, it will take place in Munich in May.

Firstly a little bit about myself, because in offering this reflection on Remembrance it is important to acknowledge certain things about me and what I bring to Remembrance. 

 I was born in February 1967 towards the end of the twenty-second year after the end of the second world war. To the boy who grew up in the 1970s that might have seemed like a long time. To the middle-aged man of 43, 22 years ago seems like yesterday. A bit more context: Both my parents were born in 1943; both of them war babies. My mother was born in Tilsit, now in the Russian Federation, then part of East Prussia. As a two-year-old she was one of the thousands of refugees fleeing the Red Army as they moved west through an eastern winter. By contrast, my father was born on a farm in rural Kent.  
 As a child I was a member of uniformed organisations like the Scouts and the Air Training Corps, which my German cousins would have been horrified by, I think. As a young man I served in both the Royal Air Force and the Royal Yeomanry (a regiment of part-time soldiers).So you can see that upon almost my entire life, the shadow of the second world war has lain.
 In Britain Remembrance Sunday is about Remembrance and Thanksgiving. Remembering the dead and giving thanks for the freedoms their sacrifice has achieved. It is both a civic and military spectacle. Although black is very much the order of the day, this is broken up by the glimmer of medals, the colours of flags and of course the ubiquitous red of the poppies. Despite all of its sad associations it is a day that we Brits look forward to with pride. 
A pride that is easy when your cause was won and your purpose was righteous. It is a pride that I have never been fully able to own. Because, you see, half the combatants in my family were on the losing and unrighteous side also, it seems.
 A few years ago I was in a town in the north-east of Germany and I noticed a small memorial with words in Hebrew and German. “Zur erinnerung und mahnug” These words translated are “To remember and give warning” The memorial marked the site of the synagogue.
 I have to say that I share the same ambivalence to Remembrance Sunday. We are asked to remember the glorious dead, but surely we should also ask why they are dead. Every year we sing “O valiant hearts” written by a local grandee, Sir john Arkwright, and I quote from this hymn 
“Proudly you gathered, rank on rank, to war,
As who had heard God’s message from afar;
All you had hoped for, all you had you gave,
To save mankind yourselves you scorned to save.

These were his servants, in his steps they trod,
Following through death the martyred son of God:
Victor he rose; victorious too shall rise
They who have drunk his cup of sacrifice”.

Clearly here the sacrifice on the Somme is equated with the sacrifice on Calvary. Not only that, but it seems from this hymn, that the victorious dead have won their salvation through fighting for the right side. I have to say nothing could be further from Christian truth than this. I wouldn’t dream of saying it on Remembrance Sunday.
In the final verse of the hymn we find these lines:
“In glorious hope, their proud and sorrowing land
Commits her children to thy gracious hand.”

To me that says it all. The reason I dislike this hymn so much is not its lack of Christian truth but those final words are a sop to thousands of working class men who lost their lives; thousands more whose lives were ruined by injury, thousands of parents, wives and children whose loss all was due to a confidence trick perpetrated by the military industrial complexes of both nations.
The hymn is a way of pacifying what anger there might have been into a ritual of sorrow and pride.
 Could the same be said of Remembrance Sunday itself?
 In recent years the focus has begun to shift away from the two World Wars of the last century. My country has become involved in one very dubious war in Iraq, and in my opinion, a far more justifiable conflict in Afghanistan. On several occasions in most months of the year service personnel killed in action are brought back with great solemnity through the town of Wootton Bassett, and each occasion is a Remembrance Sunday. What I note about this is that we are still proud of our soldiers. We continue to wear our poppies on these occasions with pride. We give our soldiers our support. But many of us, including the most loyal, question our government about the nature and reason for those conflicts. We do so on behalf of our soldiers, sailors and Air-force personnel.
 A few years ago on Remembrance Sunday I asked the question What shall I tell my children about the wars – second and first? It is question that lays right at the heart of our shared history, My response is that I shall tell them about their great-grandfathers: Franz Teubler and John Fell, both of whom fought on the Somme. They may even have fought each other. They came back and my children are their descendents. But I will also tell them of Uncle George and Uncle Werner who remained uncles with no descendents because they did not come back.
 Remembrance Sunday can be about pride and thanksgiving, but we all may have something to learn from those words on the German memorial. Remembrance is also a warning. 
I will finish with a better poem than “O valiant hearts”:
 This is poem, written by Wilfred Owen, a man who knew only too well the reality and pity of war. It is soldier’s poem and perhaps a pastor’s too.
One ever hangs where shelled roads part. 
In this war He too lost a limb, 
But His disciples hide apart; 
And now the Soldiers bear with Him. 

Near Golgotha strolls many a priest, 
And in their faces there is pride 
That they were flesh-marked by the Beast 
By whom the gentle Christ's denied 

The scribes on all the people shove 
And bawl allegiance to the state, 
But they who love the greater love 
Lay down their life; they do not hate.