Numquam Mortuorum obliviscemur...

...may we never be forgetful of the dead.

Today is Remembrance Sunday, a solemn and grave day in the secular calendar which rightly remembers those who gave their lives nobly in the defence of liberty against thraldom, monarchy against tyranny. As such, the Church (uniquely on a Sunday) can offer one Mass of Requiem for the repose of the souls of those who made the supreme sacrifice in the Two World Wars; ''Greater love hath no man than this'' said our Incarnate Lord.

All of us will have relatives, close and distant, who died in both Wars. My great-great uncle was awarded the Victoria Cross posthumously for valour in the defence of Great Britain during the First World War (I have never seen it, but my mother has; it was given to my great-grandmother who kept it - to my knowledge, the family still have it somewhere). My great-uncle John died at Monte Cassino in 1944, aged 24 years. On his anniversary some years ago, my father found his information on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website and printed it off and had it framed for my grandmother (his younger brother my grandfather died a year or two before). All but one of Tolkien's best friends were killed in the grievous Battle of the Somme, and when Humphrey Carpenter published Tolkien's biography in 1977, he dedicated the work to the memory of the ''T.C.B.S'' - ''the Tea Club and Barrovian Society'' (an allusion to their fondness for having tea, illicitly, in the school Library at King Edwards, and in Barrow's stores near the school) - one of the many ''clubs'' of Tolkien's life and in many ways the forerunner of the famous Inklings. All but two members of this informal club would be dead by 1918, lives tragically cut short.

Tolkien has a plethora of very moving stuff on the subject of War, and I have been hard-put-to-it (God grant that this does not sound slovenly) to choose what to include in this post, but I have here a short selection from his Letters and a quote from The Lord of the Rings. Alas, though, that some are too great to be posted. For anyone with a copy of Tolkien's Letters, I would strongly recommend letter 5, which was written in 1916 to Geoffrey Smith, a member of the T.C.B.S, on receiving the news of the death of Rob Gilson. It is very beautiful, and deals chiefly in matters of grief and about the great holiness of selfless sacrifice and courage.

In the summer of 1940, two evacuees from Ashford stayed with the Tolkiens at their house at 20 Northmoor Road. On their departure, Tolkien wrote this to his son Michael, then serving as an anti-aircraft gunner in the RAF (for which he was later awarded the George Medal):

''Our evacuees went off again this morning, back home to Ashford (they were railway folk), after scenes of comedy and pathos. I have never come across more simple, helpless, gentle and unhappy souls (mother and daughter-in-law). They had been away from their husbands for the first time in their married lives, and found they would prefer to be blown to bits.'' (The Letters of J.R.R Tolkien, no.39).

This next one was written to Tolkien's youngest son Christopher on 30th January 1945, number 78 of ''Pater ad Filium natu (sed haud alioquin) minimum'' (The father to the son born the youngest but by no means the least) when he was in the RAF:

''I can see clearly now in my mind's eye the old trenches and the squalid houses and the long roads of Artois, and I would visit them again if I could...

''I have just heard the news...Russians 60 miles from Berlin. It does look as if something decisive might happen soon. The appalling destruction and misery of this war mount hourly: destruction of what should be (indeed is) the common wealth of Europe, and the world, if mankind were not so besotted, wealth the loss of which will affect us all, victors or not. Yet people gloat to hear of the endless lines, 40 miles long, of miserable refugees, women and children pouring West, dying on the way. There seem no bowels of mercy or compassion, no imagination, left in this dark diabolical hour. By which I do not mean that it may not all, in the present situation, mainly (not solely) created by Germany, be necessary and inevitable. But why gloat! We were supposed to have reached a stage of civilization in which it might still be necessary to execute a criminal, but not to gloat, or to hang his wife and child by him while the orc-crowd hooted. The destruction of Germany, be it 100 times merited, is one of the most appalling world-catastrophes. Well, well - you and I can do nothing about it. And that shd. be a measure of the amount of guilt that can justly be assumed to attach to any member of a country who is not a member of its actual Government. Well the first War of the Machines seems to be drawing to its final and inconclusive chapter - leaving, alas, everyone the poorer, many bereaved or maimed and millions dead, and only one thing triumphant: the Machines. As the servants of the Machines are becoming a privileged class, the Machines are going to be enormously more powerful.'' (The Letters of J.R.R Tolkien, no. 96).

One of the most poignant themes in The Lord of the Rings, as seen brilliantly in the person of Samwise Gamgee, is the ennoblement of the simple by courage (brave at a pinch I think the saying goes). I have no doubt that this was inspired by Tolkien's own friends and experiences. In conclusion to this post, I shall quote a memorable passage from Tolkien's magnus opus:

''It was Sam's first view of a battle of Men against Men, and he did not like it much. He was glad that he could not see the dead man's face. He wondered what the man's name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace - all in a flash of thought which was quickly driven from his mind.'' (The Lord of the Rings, Book IV, Chapter IV, Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit).

Unfortunately in the great wars of this world it is the ordinary folk that suffer, and the Orcs, the drivers of the machines, the monstrous wheels of Power, wielding Men as pawns on a chess-board, grow fat on the suffering and misery of innocent people. May God grant those who died in the Two World Wars in the service of Liberty eternal rest and may their memories never be forgotten. The above photo is of a young Tolkien, scarcely older than me, when he was a Second Lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers during the First World War.