With the many events held in 2014 to commemorate the bravery of the soldiers of the two World Wars, my visits to the delightful sea front of Weymouth are made more thoughtful each time I pass the memorials erected on the esplanade.
The First War figures highly with many men of the town lost during that dreadful time.
There is a permanent bed of red memorial poppies that are renewed every year. Some inscriptions remember seamen who died in the massive sea battle at Jutland in 1916.
And others to the diverse nationalities of our Allies in those wars.
Their inscriptions remind me of the close association that the town also has with the D-Day preparations in 1944 and the sad events both before and after that operation was launched.
One memorial to a great loss of life in nearby Lyme Bay during training for D-Day during events that are perhaps less well know but equally poignant.
They went with songs to the battle, they were young.
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.
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.
They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.
The "Ode of Remembrance" is taken from Laurence Binyon's poem, "For the Fallen", which was first published in The Times in September 1914.
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