Thame Remembers Those Who Gave Their Lives For Others

THAME’S ex-serviceman, young Cadets, Fire Service, Police Service, local dignitories and towns people stood together in glorious autumn sunshine last Sunday, November 11, to remember all those men and women who had lost their lives in service to their country.
The Rev. Derrick Chambers, who lead the service, shared the experience of his own grandfather, who, as a young soldier, fought on the Western Front in the First World War on the Somme, and at Passchendaele, Loos and Ypres amidst the trenches, the barbed wire and shell-holes.
He was wounded, presumed dead and his parents received a telegram ackowledging his supreme sacrifice. But a chance journey in an ambulance enabled him to get a message to them. He survived the war, but, like others involved as he was, every Remembrance Day he lived it all again – the echo of cannon fire, machine gun fire, exploding mortars and the cries of his comrades and the screams of men whom he had been told were his enemies.
“On this day,” he said, “we will remember those who served and gave their lives. Some of us will remember fallen comrades, others will have been told of their sacrifice. But for all of us they will be immortal and will never grow old.
“They stand before us as champions of the freedom we enjoy, which must never be taken for granted.”

Poignantly, during the service, fire officers from Thame, who had been sharing the grief of their Warwickshire counterparts who lost four men in a recent fire, had to fall out when they were called to a fire call, which fortunately turned out to be a false alarm.

Photo: Pupils from Lord Williams’ School lay a wreath on the steps of Thame’s War Memorial