Sermon

9th November 25

Being a teenager should be fun: it certainly was for those of us whose teens were spent in the sixties!  But for my grandfather, and for many others of his generation, it certainly wasn’t fun.  For Cyril Jose was one of the so-called “Teenage Tommies”: those boys who lied about their age to go and fight for King and Country in the Great War.  He was still fifteen when he enlisted, and he arrived in the trenches in northern France a couple of months after his 16^th birthday.  We know a great deal about his war as he wrote hundreds of letters home from the Western Front: all of which are now in the Imperial War Museum.

I have a thick folder at home of the transcripts of those letters which I often read at this time of year.  The two I turn to most often are from July 1916.  After more than a year in the trenches, now aged 17, Cyril was part of the first wave of troops to attack the German lines in the Battle of the Somme.  Of his battalion of about 900 men, only 27 survived.  Cyril took a bullet through his shoulder and spent 24 hours in no man’s land.  He survived by drinking from the water bottles of his dead comrades.

That was July 1^st and 2^nd.  On July 13^th, now back in a hospital in Plymouth, he wrote to his sister Ivy about his relief of getting a ”blighty one” (a wound that would get him back to England).  Of going “over the top” he wrote: “Some people say that you go absolutely mad.  You don’t! I’ve never felt so cool and matter-of-fact in my life.  I was surprised.  But I was still more surprised at the reception.  You know what a hailstorm is.  Well that’s about the chance one stood of dodging the bullets (and the) shrapnel”. 

Three days later, he wrote to his mother of his own injury: “I couldn’t bandage myself but a chap pulled out my dressing … I held it to the wound until it was soaked through in about two minutes … I put the other on.  When that got soaked I chucked them both away.  When I got back to the trench my coat, cardigan and shirt were soaked through.  Had to have them cut off”.

Cyril lost his faith in both God and his fellow man.  He had considerable contempt for authority, believing that senior officers had sacrificed countless lives unnecessarily.  And, although he lived into his eighties, he was always haunted by those teenage years.

On this Remembrance Sunday, we remember first and foremost those who lost their lives in war.  But we should also remember those who, like Cyril, whilst surviving, have had their lives shattered in other ways: through bereavement, physical disability, or mental illness.  We thank God for all of them.  And we pray for the work of the Royal British Legion and the other ex-forces charities who seek to bring relief to those who still suffer as a result of their service.

Amen