Commemorative event
Saturday 2 August 2014 11.00am
Morden Park Bandstand
Merton Remembers 2014–2018
Original script by Daniel Sommerford
Male narrator Female narrator Poetry readings by Brass band Choir Christopher Fairbank
Claire Walshe
Alexander Hall
Guy Washington
Regency Brass
Colliers Wood Chorus
Led by Christopher Killerby
Special guest
The Worshipful the Mayor of the London Borough of Merton
Councillor Agatha Akyigyina
European Nations in
conflict in WWI
(Courtesy of War and
Identity website)
Merton Remembers 2014–2018
The Schlieffen Plan
B E L GI U M
G ER M A N Y
PAR I S
SWI T Z
The Race to the
Sea, and the Battle
of Ypres
(Courtesy of
1914–1918.net)
Merton Remembers 2014–2018
A Salute to the Belgian Flag
Alfred Percival Graves (1846–1931)
Hear our Master’s Message!
Yield his armies passage!
Else all your land lies desolate!
Did you pause to palter?
Nay; without one falter,
On that base assaulter
Proud defiance hurled;
While your Banner olden
Red and black and golden
To your endless glory ye unfurled.
Then the evil clangour
Of the German’s anger
Burst where ye couched across his way.
Yet in wrath ye faced him,
Leaped upon and chased him,
Launched like young lions on your prey.
Aye ! though bolted thunder
Rent your ranks in sunder,
To the whole earth’s wonder
Still ye fought on and on!
Proved at Liege’s portal
Heroes as immortal
As your proud Sires who smote the Don.
There your dread endurance
Shook our Foe’s assurance,
There laughed to scorn his plot profound
Free of your resistance,
Far in southern distance,
Fair France’s knell and ours to sound.
Merton Remembers 2014–2018
Anthem for a Doomed Youth 1917
Wilfred Owen (1893–1918)
Recited by Alexander Hall
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries for them from prayers or bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of silent minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
Merton Remembers 2014–2018
In Flanders Fields 1915
John McCrae (1872–1918)
Performed by Colliers Wood Chorus
Led by Christopher Killerby
In Flanders fields the poppies grow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place: and in the sky
The larks still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The Torch: be yours to hold it high!
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
Merton Remembers 2014–2018
Poem 1915
Robert Graves (1895–1985)
Recited by Guy Washington
I’ve watched the Seasons passing slow, so slow,
In the fields between La Bassée and Bethune;
Primroses and the first warm day of Spring,
Red poppy floods of June,
August, and yellowing Autumn, so
To Winter nights knee-deep in mud or snow,
And you’ve been everything.
Dear, you’ve been everything that I most lack
In these soul-deadening trenches—pictures, books,
Music, the quiet of an English wood,
Beautiful comrade-looks,
The narrow, bouldered mountain-track,
The broad, full-bosomed ocean, green and black,
And Peace, and all that’s good.