Bermondsey remembers

Here at St Anne's (left) is the magnificent veil of knitted poppies made by St Anne's members and their friends for today's Remembrance Sunday service and Commemoration of the Centenary of the End of the First World War.

In Old Jamaica Road at the memorial of the Queen's Regiment, where the names of over 900 Bermondsey men who died in the First World War, are inscribed, we has our traditional Act of Remembrance in the presence of veterans, the Army cadets, local residents, councillors and former MP, Sir Simon Hughes.

There was a bumper turnout this year, perhaps in view of the WW1 centenary.

It was good to give to all those who attended at Old Jamaica Rd, as well as at St Anne's and St James, a copy of the booklet Silence (you can view it here) which 'invites readers to look back with gratitude for the sacrifice made by many in war, and to reflect on eternal themes of faith hope and love.'

In St James after the service we laid a wreath of poppies at the Boer War Memorial and at the Memorial to the ten members of the St James Church Young Men's Bible Class who gave their lives in the 1914-1918 war.


Here is Michael, one of the young men currently in the congregation, laying the wreath to the members of the Young Men's Bible Class.

In the service it was good to remember those Bermondsey boys by name and to ponder the inscription below their names on the brass memorial tablet which reads 'Those who knew them, loved them.'

That was true of course not just of the ten lads from St James, but of every one of the sixteen million who died in the First World War. The scale of the suffering and the grief that followed is literally unimaginable.

But each person who died was a precious person made in the image of God. Each of them was loved by their families and precious to them, and that's why it is good each year to remember, and then to hear God's message of comfort and hope from his word.

North Bermondsey Ward councillors lay a wreath at the Old Jamaica Rdmemorial