For the Fallen

“At the going down of the sun and in the morning;”

The line from Binyon’s 1914 poem must be one of the most remembered and repeated line of verse.  He wrote his poem whilst on the North Cornish coast, near Polzeath, looking out to sea.  Though written for the fallen servicemen and women serving across the channel in the first World War it serves now a far wider remit.  My professional work takes in both rugby and photography.  Having spent the whole day reviewing action from the second round of the 2015/16 European Champions and Challenge cups, the tricolour arm bands worn in memory of the Paris victims were particularly poignant.  With rugby sharing many of the same values as Service life it brought forward another line from the same poem:

“They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;”

But perhaps in these troubled times, with the particular horrors of modern conflict, the most apt line is the one that follows and is applicable to anyone, from which ever corner of the world they originate who has to endure the news that a dear one will not be returning home that night:

“They sit no more at familiar tables of home;”