Click on the video to see ‘For Remembrance’

From The Very Rev William McMillan Library of First Dunmurry (Non-Subscribing) Presbyterian Church.

Exploring the Library: Episode 5 For Remembrance. A booklet given to returning servicemen after the First World War.

A short talk by the Rev Dr David Steers. With thanks to Jack Steers for playing the Last Post and Reveille on the trumpet.

This is rather a scruffy looking booklet but it is a very rare survival of which the editors said: ‘If it attains to anything like its aim it will be a real “keepsake,” an abiding record of the owner’s place and part in our nation’s mightiest struggle…’ A copy was given to every Unitarian and Non-Subscribing serviceman who returned from the First World War. It contains some poignant quotes and six short reflections by ministers who had served alongside the troops.

Possibly as many as 9,000 copies were issued but very few survive, at least in libraries, so we are fortunate to have a copy in the Very Rev William McMIllan Library. Click on the video to find out more about ‘For Remembrance’.

3 thoughts on “For Remembrance”

  1. Thank you for this. My father was a soldier in WW1, but he was not a Unitarian then, alas.

    He had a bad time, was wounded twice and sent back twice, and as a boy I remember hearing him having nightmares in which he shouted out, until my mother punched him awake and out of the dream. He didn’t parade his wartime experiences, but didn’t hide them away either. But he would not attend any re-union events until my sister dragged him to one, laid on by the Lord Mayor of Birmingham, sixty years after the ending of the war.

    Hearing Nicol Cross’s words, the strength and honesty of them, helps me understand a little better what hell on earth it was.

    Thanks again,

    John.

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    1. Thanks for sharing this John. It is terrible to think of the suffering experienced by men like your father for a lifetime after the war. One of the interesting things about this little book is that in its own small way it was genuinely trying to provide some sort of help to returning service people. As you say there is a strength and honesty in Nicol Cross’s piece. I wouldn’t have expected that from what I previously thought I knew of him but I didn’t know he had volunteered for the Medical Corps in the war. I think I will read the whole of his piece at our Remembrance Service on Sunday. I am glad we found this little booklet.

      With all good wishes,

      David

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