The Kohima Epitaph
( from the Imperial War Museum http://collections.iwm.org.uk/server/show/ConWebDoc.1261 )

When you go home
Tell them of us and say
For your tomorrow
We gave our today

The above epitaph is engraved on the War Memorial to commemorate the men of the British 2nd Division who fell in the Battle of Kohima in 1944. According to Major General John Grover, who commanded the 2nd Division at Kohima, the epitaph there was composed by Major John Etty-Leal and was probably inspired by an epitaph written during the First World War by John Maxwell Edmonds (1875-1958):-

When you go home, tell them of us and say
"For your to-morrows these gave their to-day."

Edmonds was a classical scholar and it is possible that he took his inspiration from the Ancient Greek Simonides of Ceos. It was Simonides who wrote the famous lines about the Spartan rearguard under Leonidas who held the pass of Thermopylae against the Persians in 480 BC. One translation of Simonides' epitaph runs thus:-

Tell it in Sparta, thou that passes by
Here, faithful to her charge, her soldiers lie

If we are to maintain our peace and freedom, we must always remember.

“They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old,
Age shall not weary them nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun, and in the morning
We will remember them.”

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields

By John McCrae 1915

If We Return
by F.W. Harvey

If we return, will England be
Just England still to you and me?
The place where we must earn our bread?
We who have walked among the dead,
And watched the smile of agony,
And seen the price of Liberty,
Which we had taken carelessly

From other hands. Nay, we shall dread,
If we return,
Dread lest we hold blood-guiltily
The things that men have died to free.
Oh, English fields shall blossom red
For all the blood that has been shed
By men whose guardians are we,
If we return.

for a little more on
F.W. Harvey

http://www.forum.forest-of-dean.net/index.php?mode=thread&id=7769

--
Ἀριστοτέλης A Gloster Boy in the Forest of Dean ><((((*>

When you go home tell them of us and say -
For your tomorrow we gave our today

this year you can plant a virtual poppy :-
http://www.britishlegion.org.uk/remembrance/we-will-remember-them/plant-a-virtual-poppy...

Cherish me not with regretful thought,
Of what might have been for you and me.
Remember me not with tears and sighs,
Like the poppies, I did not die.
My body bled a blood as red as any poppy that ever grew,
And from this mortal shell a soul was shed,
And on your loving thoughts it fed,
And bloomed again, as poppies will
Upon that field, where so much blood was spilled.
Remember me with love and joy,
For I am but still the boy you knew.
I lie not unknown, where the poppies grew,
I live now, even as you.

© Elizabeth Anderson 1958

--
Ἀριστοτέλης A Gloster Boy in the Forest of Dean ><((((*>

At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

We Shall Keep the Faith

Oh! you who sleep in Flanders Fields,
Sleep sweet - to rise anew!
We caught the torch you threw
And holding high, we keep the Faith
With All who died.

We cherish, too, the poppy red
That grows on fields where valor led;
It seems to signal to the skies
That blood of heroes never dies,
But lends a lustre to the red
Of the flower that blooms above the dead
In Flanders Fields.

And now the Torch and Poppy Red
We wear in honour of our dead.
Fear not that ye have died for naught;
We'll teach the lesson that ye wrought
In Flanders Fields.

by Ms Moira Bell Michael, November 1918

Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.
Prime Minister Winston Churchill 20 August 1940

--
Ἀριστοτέλης A Gloster Boy in the Forest of Dean ><((((*>

Remembering...

William George HALE, Gunner, Royal Garrison Artillery. Died 4-November-1918

Sidney SMITH, 9th Batallion, Welsh Regiment. Died 7-July-1916 (the Somme)

Both were sons of the Forest.

--
Scott Shuster
Houston, Texas USA

If we are to maintain our peace and freedom, we must always remember.

“They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old,
Age shall not weary them nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun, and in the morning
We will remember them.”

Remembrance Day is here again,
On this day we remember all those who were slain.
The ones they left behind have endured much sorrow and pain.
But rest assured,
the whole world knows those brave ones didn't die in vain.

The poppies that you see people wear,
Are there to show you they still care.
We open our hearts so that we can share,
A moment of silence, and offer a prayer.

To all the soldiers who died saving our country.

~~By Patti Joyce.~~

--
Ἀριστοτέλης A Gloster Boy in the Forest of Dean ><((((*>

If we are to maintain our peace and freedom, we must always remember.

“They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old,
Age shall not weary them nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun, and in the morning
We will remember them.”

St Paul's
(London May 11th 1941)

I walked to Ludgate Hill down from the Strand,
By broken beauty of a City’s shattered breast;
Where streets, tradition-steeped, were piled
With debris; where men fought fire to wrest,
From fiercest hate, the fragments of a grand
And glorious heritage; untiring men, who smiled.

I saw St. Clements Dane, and thought of Spring,
Of fashionable weddings and decades now done;
But smouldering walls and empty aisles were hushed
With silence of rebuke for splendour gone;
From ruined pews lost echoes seemed to ring
With peals of praise, but ravished bells lay crushed.

Then, poised out of chaos and this Dantesque dream,
Shrouded by smoke, the high familiar dome,
Splendidly proud above the crumbling walls
And devastation, the symbol of our Home,
And Britain’s faith and effort, shone supreme,
An edifice of glory, old St. Pauls.

Namur King

--
Ἀριστοτέλης A Gloster Boy in the Forest of Dean ><((((*>

If we are to maintain our peace and freedom, we must always remember.

“They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old,
Age shall not weary them nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun, and in the morning
We will remember them.”

Anthem for doomed youth

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, -
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Wilfred Owen
September - October, 1917

--
Ἀριστοτέλης A Gloster Boy in the Forest of Dean ><((((*>