Dear Friends

I can hardly believe that it’s already November, a month of significant dates: All Souls Day on the 1st, Remembrance Day on the 11th, St. Andrew’s Day on 30th, and, often, the beginning of Advent, on any date between 27th November and 3rd December. Each of these occasions see us looking back to times, and people, no longer with us and, to differing degrees, forward in hope.

All Souls Day and Remembrance Day concentrate our minds on people we have lost; the first those we were close to, the second all who have died in war.

Remembrance Day was initially intended as a time to think about, and be grateful for, those who made the supreme sacrifice during the Great War – called somewhat hopefully at the time, ‘The War to End All Wars’. With the subsequent Second World War, and many conflicts around the world since, the focus shifted to be on all who suffer as a result of war.

Expert estimates vary, but from 1900 to the present day at least 187 million people have lost their lives to war! Such a colossal number makes it all too easy to lose sight of the fact that each and every one was a flesh and blood person, someone’s father/mother, daughter/son, brother/sister, etc. The scale of loss is unimaginable. So, at last year’s Remembrance Day service, I spoke briefly about Theodore Bayley Hardy, born on 20 October 1863, died on 18 October 1918.

When the First World War broke out in 1914, Theodore was the vicar of a country church in Northern England. He volunteered for the army, but was repeatedly turned down, because of his age. He persevered and, in the summer of 1916, became a Captain and Chaplain of the 8th Battalion The Lincolnshire Regiment and The 8th Battalion The Somersets, serving across the Western Front, from Ypres to the Somme, from 1916 to 1918. Theodore never carried a weapon, but spent a lot of time with the men in the trenches, simply talking, comforting them with his presence, sharing his cigarettes and taking their letters to the field post office. At night, Theodore often crept, alone, into no man’s land, to retrieve a wounded soldier or a body. As he returned, he would say ‘It’s only me, boys. There’s nothing to be afraid of. He won’t hurt you.’

Adding, when necessary, ‘Help me to bury him and then I’ll read the burial service. You can join in if you wish.’ Exactly one month before the end of the war, Theodore was hit by a bullet, dying a week later from his wounds. He was the most decorated non-combatant in WW1: The Reverend Captain Theodore Bayley Hardy V.C. D.S.O. M.C. The example of Theodore Hardy reveals both the tragedy of war, and the heroics that can come from a faith-driven life. He willingly entered combat zones to bring the love of God to where it was desperately needed, and paying the ultimate price for doing so. As Jesus said,

‘No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.’ (John 15:13)

Many blessings, Carl