Lest We Forget

Yesterday I took a look at the largest private aquarium in Europe; 18,500 gallons of water and more than 1,000 fish from the Great Barrier Reef swimming around feeling homesick. It is on the ground floor of the Heron Tower which, conveniently, is across the road from St Botolph without Bishopsgate. The photograph is not very good but I was put off by the receptionist, bottom left, who told me that photography is forbidden. In the trade it’s called a “grab shot” which is why you have to look rather carefully to see even a few of the shoals of fish living in some seriously expensive real estate.

The Service I attended at St B-w-B was pre-quelled here yesterday. On the way I stopped at my club to print some boarding passes for an upcoming trip. I was accosted by a member who recognised my HAC tie. He had commanded the regiment a few years before I joined but did not accompany me to the Service. However, it was well attended. The Lesson, Wisdom 3: 1-9, was the one used in 1916. The Bible was one the Prince of Wales had used at the HAC in 1887. It is usual in the City to have a rich marinade of history.

The Reading, by Ian Adams, was The Dead from War Sonnets by Rupert Brooke. It was actually not a reading. He recited it from memory and I was not the only person to speak to him afterwards and thank him. I will let you read the poem. It starts, Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead!

The Bishop of Stepney gave the Address. My mind wandered and I remembered a Remembrance Sunday Service at Yattendon in Berkshire. The rather lefty vicar’s prayers were wide ranging including one for Osama bin Laden. I was accompanying a grande dame who said afterwards, very loudly, “I don’t remember praying for Hitler in the war”.

Well, the Bishop of Stepney, if indeed he is a lefty, only indicated this by his facial hair. After the Service someone kindly said that Jesus Christ had a beard. I took this picture when I arrived and you can see that it recreates the scene in 1916, although the church then was smothered in some creeper.

The Service Sheet is a credit to whoever wrote it. It has a lot of detail about the HAC, Kitchener, “Jack” Cornwell and attitudes to the war in 1916. I will restrict myself to a few observations about the HAC.

The Honourable Artillery Company is the oldest regiment in the British army. Its first battle honour was at the Armada. It is not the oldest army in Europe, that honour belongs to the Swiss Guard at the Vatican who invited members of the HAC to join in their 500th anniversary some ten years ago.

However, the HAC have been at “the sharp end”. About 13,000 members served in the Great War, of whom more than 1,600 lost their lives. More recently they have deployed in the Balkans, Iraq and Aghanistan. They maintain a link to their artillery origins by firing ceremonial salutes at the Tower of London. (I did one for the Princess Royal’s first born.)