In Memoriam

Graham Tall

I’ve been asked to read out the names of the boys who have died. After I’ve read them out, I’m going to say the words of a verse from a poem I learned at the School Toc H. Most of you will remember it, not because you were members of the School Toc H group, but because it is always read out on Remembrance Sunday. When I first learned it, for the ceremony of light at Toc H, it was meaningless to me, because I hadn’t known anyone who had died - sadly 50 years later, that is no longer the case.

Like you I knew all the boys we are going to remember tonight. One, Michael Dickie was, in the sixth, my best friend.  Think and remember kindly the lads we once knew, two of whom died whilst we were planning this event.

Their names are:

At the end of the Toc H ceremony of light, all present repeat the last line, We will remember them. I think that that would be fitting here. The verse is:

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.

The verse comes from For the Fallen, a poem by the English poet and writer Laurence Binyon and was published in London in The Winnowing Fan: Poems of the Great War in 1914.