St Giles’ Church, Oxford

Parish News

1914-1918: Reflections on the Great War

At the going down of the sun, and in the morning,

we will remember them.

November 2018 Free

 PARISH CONTACTS
Vicar: Canon Andrew Bunch, 01865 510460
The Vicarage, Church Walk, Oxford OX2 6LY vicar@churchwalk.eclipse.co.uk
Associate Priest: Revd Tom Albinson 01865 515409 or 07426 948251
tomalbinson@gmail.com
Lay Minister: David Longrigg, 9 Hawkswell Gardens, Oxford OX2 7EX (576638)
Benefice Manager: Meg Peacock 07776 588712
10 Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6HT beneficemanager@st-giles-church.org
Churchwardens
Maureen Chu 01865 514185 maureenchu1@gmail.com
Joanne Russell 01865 760788 joannerussell1@me.com
Safeguarding Officer: Siân Grønlie sian.gronlie@st-annes.ox.ac.uk
Treasurer: Rod Nixon treasurer@st-giles-church.org
Music Director: Andrew Patterson andrew.patterson@finemusic.co.uk
Choir Director: Nicholas Prozzillo choir@st-giles-church.org
PCC Secretary: Sarah-Jane White sarah-jane.white@ihs.ox.ac.uk
Captain of the Bells: John Pusey bellringers@st-giles-church.org
Church Flowers: Mary Whitlock stgilesflowers@gmail.com
Benefice Secretary/Parish News: Anne Dutton secretary@st-giles-church.org
Twitter @StGilesOxford
Instagram stgileschurch
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/ChurchStGilesOxford
Website www.st-giles-church.org
________________________________________________________________
WEEKLY SERVICES AT ST GILES’
Sunday 8:00 am Holy Communion (BCP)
10:30 am Holy Communion
6:30 pm Evensong (BCP)
Monday 5:30 pm Evening Prayer
Tuesday 5:30 pm Evening Prayer
Wednesday 12:30 pm Eucharist
5:30 pm Evening Prayer
Thursday 5:30 pm Evening Prayer
Friday 1:15 pm Taizé Worship
5:30 pm Evening Prayer
Saturday 5:30 pm Evening Prayer

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I would like to express my gratitude to everyone who has contributed to this special
edition of Parish News in response to our request for Reflections on Remembrance as
we approach the centenary of the Armistice in 1918. Anne Dutton, Editor
Items for inclusion in the December issue should be sent to secretary@st-giles-
church.org by 20th November.

Contents – November 2018

Reflections on the Great War - Andrew Bunch Page 3
Remembrance and the Great War – Maureen Chu Page 6
J R R Tolkien, Oxford University, and the Great War – G R Evans Page 7
Edmund (‘Ted’) John Bowen – Margaret Pinsent Page 10
Oxford City War Memorial – Hugo Brunner Page 13
My Reflections on Remembrance – Martin Henig Page 15
Can You Hear a Bugle’s Call from St Giles’? – Jim Smith Page 16
Thoughts on Remembrance – Andrew Sillett Page 18
Ringing for Peace in 1918 – John Pusey Page 19
Notes from the Great War on a Lost Relative – Sue Street Page 21
Family Recollections of World War 1 – Tim Myatt Page 22
Remembering a Veteran of the Great War – Nick Jameson Page 24
Poignant Memories – Betty Couldrey Page 25
Keeping the Home Fires Burning – Anne Dutton Page 26
Killed in Action poem/The Lord’s Prayer in English and German Page 29
Reflections on Remembrance – Alison Bickmore Page 30
St Giles’ War Memorial Names (in Alphabetical Order) Page 31
Canon Charles Cuthbert Inge, Vicar of St Giles 1913-1937 Page 32
Chaplains in the Great War Page 33
Dates for your Diary – November 2018 Page 34
St Giles’ Music List – November 2018 Page 35
All Souls’ Day and St Giles’ Faure Requiem Page 36

The cost of printing this edition of the magazine has been donated in memory of
Gerald Arthur Dutton, 31/10/1938-1/6/1982

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 REFLECTIONS ON PERSONAL EXPERIENCES OF THE GREAT WAR

A LTHOUGH the First World War is very much in the past, there are
some memories that I carry about those days which have come
directly to me from people who were there. Indeed, some of what
they told me still influences the way I act today.
My father was born just before the start of the Great War and he
had a memory of those days which he passed on to me. It concerns an
aeroplane landing in the field close to where he lived in Lincolnshire. It
was a big event in his life as a small boy, something that was so
extraordinary that he never forgot this awesome and magical moment
in his early boyhood.
However, the majority of my
memories of the Great War come
from soldiers who fought on the
Front and were known as “The Old
Contemptibles”. It was a name
given them by the then enemy, who
thought the British Army was just a
rag-bag of soldiers who could do
nothing useful. Well, they proved
otherwise, because these men were
people very worthy of respect and
were prepared to face death for
their friends who were stuck in the
same situation. The men I knew
Old Contemptibles’ War Memorial in
were old, they had lots of medals and Westminster Abbey
clinked and jangled as they brought
up their flags into their annual Remembrance service in my father’s
village church. He loved them, and they loved him and for my father,
who was a shy man, the greatest moment of his career was preaching
at an Old Contemptibles’ service in either Westminster Abbey or St
Paul’s - I can’t remember which.
I was a young boy when I met these old soldiers gathering in my
parents’ house for tea. They had been wounded; one had a noticeable
dent in his skull, and they were a lovely crowd to be with. They told me
one story about the troops coming back from the Front-line after a tour
of duty. They came back on London buses and they played a game as

4
they made their way behind the lines. They all gathered on the top
deck of the bus and then ran from side to side of the bus to try and
make it tip over. I don’t think they ever managed to do so … but that
was the mind of these men after being at the Front, never knowing if
they were going to live or die.
They told me about little things they did at the Front, to try and
keep the place tidy and stay safe. How to light a match and preserve
the flame in the outdoors. Then, rather than drop the match on the
ground, return it to the match-box, making sure the spent match was
the other way around to the live matches, so you didn’t start a fire.
They gave me the story that one of the chaplains taught them
about two men who had been killed and they were making their way to
heaven. It involved a folded piece of paper, a ticket, which one soldier
had, and the other didn’t. As they walked along, the soldier who
hadn’t got a ticket, asked for a share of the ticket, and after two
different appeals he had been given two one-third portions of the
ticket. When they got to the pearly gates, the soldier who had
originally had the ticket handed his remaining third of the ticket to St
Peter. He unfolded it and … it was in the shape of a cross … he gained
entry to heaven. The other soldier gave his ticket with great
excitement and anticipation, but when Peter unfolded the pieces and
put them together it spelt out HELL. It is a story which I have tried to
share, so as to honour the brave men of faith that I came to know as a
young boy.
I have never been an advocate of war, but I have more than a
healthy respect for the men who went to war all those years ago. They
were noble men, worthy of respect, and there are times when I feel
ashamed of the way we behave with the precious gift of peace that
they gave so much for to achieve. Andrew Bunch
__________________________________________________________
THE COLLECT FOR REMEMBRANCE SUNDAY

A LMIGHTY Father, whose will is to restore all things in your beloved

Son, the King of all: govern the hearts and minds of those in
authority, and bring the families of the nations, divided and torn apart
by the ravages of sin, to be subject to his just and gentle rule; who is
alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now
and for ever. Amen. (From Common Worship)

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 REMEMBRANCE AND THE GREAT WAR

S T GILES’ Church has commemorated the centenary of the Great

War by taking the names on the Memorial on the north wall and
giving details of the life, association with the Parish, and resting places
of those who fell in the conflict. This restrained, yet deeply moving
approach fulfils the promise made during the Remembrance services,
and commemorations for other Wars, when we say ‘We will remember
them’.
The many exhibitions, books, revisionist histories, and debates
about the conflict are in their own way recognition of the continuing
impact of the War, even up to the present day. The steadfastness,
comradeship, humour (good and subversive), suffering, and gallantry
are part of the story of the soldiers in the War. It would be an omission
not to acknowledge the wider sense of duty, prevalent in their time,
which guided their conduct, despite the wry or critical view they may
have taken of the conducting of affairs which affected their existence.
Commemorating the anniversary of each death through the
course of the Centenary of the Great War has been a most fitting and
honourable way of showing our reverence and respect when
remembering and contemplating the events of a hundred years ago.
Maureen Chu

War Sonnet V: The Soldier

IF I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven. Rupert Brooke

(Born Rugby, 3rd August 1887. Died Skyros, Greece, 23rd April 1915)

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 J R R TOLKIEN, OXFORD UNIVERSITY, AND THE GREAT WAR

T HE exhibition in the Weston Library and the Blackwell’s Tolkien Day

have made J R R Tolkien a prominent name in Oxford all this
summer. He had his First World War experience partly in an Oxford
which was to be changed by the War in unforeseen ways.
Tolkien was born in 1892 so he was of full age to join the Army
when the First World War broke out. He was in the middle of his
Oxford degree and not at all keen to break off, especially if, as
everyone said, the war was going to be over by Christmas anyway. But
around him, Oxford was emptying of its students as they hastened to
go to war. T S Eliot, as an American in Oxford, noted the disappearance
of two-thirds ‘of the ordinary enrollment’. ‘One feels the strain of the
present situation’, he wrote.
Dons were enlisting too, some offering medical or intelligence
skills. Some put their minds to analysis of the whole affair and its
justification. Why we are at war: Great Britain’s case, by the members
of the Oxford Faculty of History, was already in its third edition in 1914.
The University made its adjustments. It offered hospitality to
Belgian refugees, billeting some in empty college accommodation.
Serbians were welcomed too, and both Belgians and Serbians were
admitted as unmatriculated undergraduates. Other empty student
space was used for billeting soldiers and for the provision of hospitals.
By now women were admitted to lectures, though not yet
allowed to take degrees. Some interrupted their studies - as Vera
Brittain did - to do voluntary war work, especially nursing. The women
students who remained at Oxford found themselves in a majority at
lectures. They were also in need of tutors and in 1919 Tolkien did
some private tutoring at St Hugh’s and Lady Margaret Hall.
German ‘Rhodes Scholars’ had been provided for in a codicil to
Cecil Rhodes’ will, in the belief that this would help prevent war. By
1916 it had become impossible to defer the suspension of these
scholarships, though the American Rhodes scholarships continued. In
1917, the DPhil was initiated as an Oxford degree, partly in order to
meet the wishes of American graduate students to work for an ‘Oxford
doctorate’.
Putting up with the reproaches of his family, Tolkien stayed to
finish his degree in July 1915. By then his family was putting enormous

7
pressure on him, so he enlisted and began officer training. He wrote
disparagingly to his fiancée Edith
from the training camp about the
people he found himself among. He
said few seemed to be ‘gentlemen’
and many scarcely human beings.
When the pair married they took
lodgings near the camp.
In June 1916 he was sent to
join the British Expeditionary Force in
France. He went with under-
standable foreboding because by
then it was well known that new
officers like him were likely to be
killed, and quickly. He was made a
Signals Officer with the Lancashire 1916 - Tolkien as a second lieutenant in
the Lancashire Fusiliers (aged 24)
Fusiliers and had to learn to com-
mand men, mostly Lancastrians from the local mines and factories. He
liked them much better than his officer-cadet colleagues and their
instructors. But he learned that he disliked being anyone’s boss. Then
began the infamous Battle of the Somme which lasted until November.
By October Tolkien had the trench fever which was being spread by the
lice which infested the trenches. That brought him back to England,
invalided out, and ensured his survival when many of his battalion died
in the period which followed.
He spent the rest of the war in and out of active service, with
repeated spells of illness, in between which he was sent to do duty in
camps in England. He spent his periods of convalescence beginning to
write the stories which were to develop into The Lord of the Rings.
After he was demobilized (not until 1920), he worked on the Oxford
English Dictionary, largely on the etymology of English words which
arrived with the Anglo-Saxons. After a period lecturing at Leeds
University, he was back in Oxford for good as Rawlinson and Bosworth
Professor of Anglo-Saxon until 1945, and Fellow of Pembroke College.
Tolkien’s post-war freedom to live an older style of Oxford life
was long and largely unaffected. Nevertheless, the Oxford to which
Tolkien returned was already facing a significant change in its

8
relationship with the state and the balance between sciences and
humanities. In May, 1919, at the insistence of the Hebdomadal
Council, the University Gazette published in full the correspondence
about money between the Vice-Chancellor and the President of the
Board of Education, H A L Fisher, who was to return to Oxford as
Warden of New College.
The new red-brick universities had been applying to the
Government for state funding. Oxford and Cambridge consulted one
another and decided to join in. Memoranda were prepared. Oxford
was determined not to compromise its independence but the scientists
got a whiff of much-needed money for more and better laboratories
and to pay Demonstrators and laboratory assistants. There was a
strong faction which still saw science as not suitable for undergraduate
study but only for vocational study in mechanics’ institutes, arguing
that:
Unless purely scientific research receives support real
progress cannot be expected even in industrial and other
practical applications; for useful inventions have mostly
had their origin in research carried on without any
interest other than that of advancement of knowledge.
This unsuccessful call for the allocation of specific funding for
such needs led to the formulation of a Government policy of funding
universities by ‘block grant’, ‘for the expenditure of which the
University, as distinguished from any particular Department, will be
responsible’, which was to continue in force until the second decade of
the twenty-first century. G R Evans
__________________________________________________________

A PRAYER FOR REMEMBRANCE SUNDAY

O LORD, our maker and our strength, from whose love in Christ we
can never be parted either by death or defeat: may our
remembrance this day deepen our sorrow for the loss and wastes of
war, make us more grateful to those who courageously gave their lives
to defend this land and commonwealth; and may all who bear the scars
and memories of conflicts, past and present, know your healing love
for the sake of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace. Amen.
(https://www.churchofengland.org/first-world-war-centenary)

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 EDMUND (‘TED’) JOHN BOWEN (1898-1980)

M Y FATHER’S memoir of his experiences in WW1 has been

reproduced by one of his grandsons as a book, called Gap Years.
As the foreword explains, ‘Having grown up the son of a schoolteacher
in Worcester, his whole life was cloistered by academic pursuit’ (Fellow
and Praelector in Chemistry, University College; Proctor; DSC; FRS in
1935; Davy Medal in 1968; publication The Chemical Aspects of Light;
an ammonite named after him). ‘Apart, that is, from two years spent
on the battlefields of Flanders from 1916-1918’. Today’s gap year
students should consider what that war meant.
He went up to Balliol to read
chemistry, but felt he should join up.
He was selected for training as an
artillery officer, as there was a
severe shortage of gunners due to
the high casualty rate. After a crash
course, he sat a ‘ridiculously simple
examination’. Training manuals
could be taken in, to copy out the
answer, and the instructor told them
what questions there might be.
‘Everyone passed except for two
reprobates who got so drunk the
night before that they failed to turn
up for the examination’. He was now a ‘fully trained officer’, despite
being totally inexperienced in handling a battery, and was sent out,
attached to 13th Siege Battery RGA of 9.2’’ howitzers, firing shells of
290 lbs, maximum range 10,000 yards. It took three 4-wheeled
vehicles to transport the gun in separate loads, which had to be done
every fortnight or so because the enemy had discovered their position.
The CO, Major Collins, greeted him with ‘We all drink whisky
here: I hope you do.’’ My father had never drunk anything alcoholic,
but ‘pretended to look mature’. A few days later a shell killed Major
Collins and wounded some other officers. Luckily my father was a mile
or two back at the stores base at Dickebusch. He walked over to see
the Hill 60 mine craters, ‘enormous holes in a battlefield of mud, shell
craters, barbed wire and abandoned equipment’. On one occasion an

10
enemy 150 mm shell hit the pile of unfused shells stored ready
behind the guns, luckily without blowing them up, but shedding picric
acid.
Battery officers had to man forward observation posts,
connected to the battery by temporary telephone wires that were
constantly in need of repair. ‘As a newcomer I at first did not
appreciate the sharp eyes of the enemy and the need to keep as well
hidden as possible’. He and his signallers were lucky to escape some
heavy shelling. The battery moved to Sanctuary Wood. ‘Most of the
shell holes were full of stinking water, on which floated debris better
not examined too closely. The smell of unburied dead and of high
explosive was everywhere’. A corduroy road of planks had been
made which enabled the guns to be brought in, but the shock of firing
made them tilt, which was hard to put right. ‘In planning their
activities the higher military authorities seemed to make no
allowances for the infantry and other services to avoid the
consequences of the abnormally wet autumn and the churned-up
impermeable sticky clay soil of the region’.
He was sent out with a Corporal and two signallers to pick a
place for a forward observation post. Near the German lines they
were spotted and a field gun battery opened up. ‘Suddenly there was
a deafening explosion; the trench wall caved in and we were half
buried in soil. As I was falling back I had a momentary glimpse of the
Corporal beside me. A shell splinter had smashed a hole through his
head, and he fell forward and was partly buried at my feet’. The shell
had exploded on the parapet a yard away. My father escaped with a
small cut and tiny metal particles penetrating the skin.
Other near misses: the Battery Major and he were shelled at La
Chapelle farm, and a shovel flying through the air just missed him. In
Sanctuary Wood, the gun crews were crouching in shell holes (no real
cover) under heavy fire. His tin hat was suddenly struck off as if by a
crowbar. One of the several wounded men was too badly injured to
survive. At Gouzeaucourt, as part of an optimistically planned attack,
he was in an exposed trench (‘machine-gun bullets made the place
very unpleasant’) when his companion, a young Lieutenant, was
killed. The attack was in fact a failure. Soon after, out in the open, ‘a
shell burst about 200 yards behind me, and as I turned round I could

11
see a splinter coming straight towards me. It was travelling fast, and I
could see it only because I was looking almost exactly in its line of
flight’. It cut a tear in his trench-coat without leaving a mark on him.
Then a counter-attack meant the Germans were already
manning rising ground nearby. The guns could not be pointed in that
direction, and the rifles were in a village already held by the enemy.
So the breech blocks were damaged in case the guns fell into enemy
hands, and the retreat was on. ‘While running down a sandy lane I
picked up a nice flint arrowhead (but not a useful weapon at the
time!)’.
A British counter-attack soon regained the ground lost. ‘Near
the battery we found that abandoned stores of Army rum (a very
strong potent, fiery liquid) had been looted and several men had
drunk themselves to death’. The guns were replaced by six new ones
of improved pattern.
The use of gas shell in 1918 meant wearing respirators for
lengthy periods (‘not very pleasant’). In March a powerful German
attack drove the whole Fifth Army to retreat for miles. There was just
time to drag the guns away with tractors, but some kit had to be
abandoned. My father was sent with a lorry to collect what had been
left, ‘the most valued article being the gramophone and records’.
Again his luck held and he re-joined the battery, at the rear of the
mass of retreating vehicles. They fell back through the whole of the
Somme area and stabilised behind Albert.
With the arrival of American troops the balance began to turn
in favour of the Allies, and the battery returned to its former position.
There was heavy fighting during the next two months, but then the
Germans were retreating too fast for 13 th Siege Battery to keep up
with them. ‘We celebrated [the Armistice on 11th November] on
beer, and for the first time produced our Webley revolvers and used
our ammunition on beer–bottle targets’.
Demobilisation took months, and there was insubordination
amongst frustrated men, but as a student he was in the category for
early release. ‘I became a civilian again in time for the Oxford Hilary
Term 1919. Five terms later, in June 1920, I took the Final Honour
School of Chemistry and managed to obtain a First Class’.
Margaret Pinsent

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 OXFORD CITY WAR MEMORIAL, ST GILES

Y OU may have noticed that a new inscription has recently been cut
into the city’s war memorial. Its main text appeals to me because
it not only honours the memory of those who lost their lives in conflict
but also those who risked them – my father was a subaltern in the
Royal Field Artillery in 1917-18.
Oxford Town Council commissioned the memorial after the First
World War. It was erected in 1921, in accordance with the drawings of
a local architect, Thomas Rayson (father of Christopher Rayson, who
designed the rooms at the back of our church) on land given by St
John’s College. It is made of Clipsham stone.
The memorial consists of a cross with a plain octagonal tapering
shaft set on an octagonal tapering plinth, which in turn stands on a
base of five octagonal steps. These steps stand on a deeper step which
is often used as a seat, with another smaller step below. This in turn is
set on an octagonal slab. It was built by Messrs Wooldridge & Simpson
of Oxford. All eight faces of the plinth are decorated, with the carving

13
done by Ernest Field of Stockmore Street, Oxford. It was designated a
Grade II listed structure on 5th December 2016.
The First World War text, on the tapering plinth, has become so
blurred as to make the words on the second step down, “and 1939–
1945” look odd, even inexplicable, and so unworthy of the people the
memorial commemorates. Two years ago I decided, with the
encouragement of Liz Wade, then a City Councillor, to see whether we
could improve the memorial’s message.
I consulted Martin Jennings and Alec Peever, both distinguished
letter-cutters and sculptors, and they advised that it would be very
difficult, due to the complexity of the lettering, to clarify the existing
WW1 inscription without damaging the integrity of the overall design.
They recommended that the text should be repeated on the south
face, and the two adjoining faces, of the top step, just above and in the
same style as the Second World War text, to which it would be closely
related.
The WW1 wording is: “In memory of those who fought and those
who fell 1914-1918”. In order to adhere to the symmetry of the
memorial, Alec suggested that this text should be shortened to: “For
those who fought and those who fell 1914-1918”. “1914-1918” should
be inscribed immediately above “1939-1945” on the step below; “FOR
THOSE WHO FOUGHT” on the adjoining left face, and “AND THOSE
WHO FELL” on the adjacent right face. Alec agreed to undertake the
work.

14
 The next step was to gain the support of Oxford City Council, the
owner of the memorial. Planning officers were sympathetic, but
required me to apply for listed building consent to commission the
work. While I waited for a decision I consulted Councillors about
funding the work. Four of them offered to contribute from the
allowances they receive to support projects in their wards, and a
further sum was offered from the Council’s maintenance budget.
Official permission was granted in June. Alec completed the task on
12th July 2018. Hugo Brunner
________________________________________________________________
MY REFLECTIONS ON REMEMBRANCE

W HILE of course it goes without saying that I am moved to horror

and indignation by the obscenity of WW1 as of all wars, best
reflected in the writings of the War Poets, which read to me as Our
Lord’s cries of anguish and despair from the Cross, I cannot stand the
manner in which we commemorate this event.
Like the Shoah, the War, and all
wars, demonstrate the baselessness
and cruelty of humanity, at least en
masse, which is encapsulated
throughout history in cruelty and
bloodshed, including the records and
bloodthirsty sentiments to be found
scattered throughout all parts of the
Bible. I am sorry, but I cannot see our
species - which perpetuates such
cruelty on other humans as well as on
other animals - as made in the image
of God.
I am depressed by the continuing military parades, by the
fulsome nonsense of the war memorials, and the often mawkish
sentimentality. I try to stay away from the whole sorry business, apart
from going to weep at the Animals in War Memorial in Park Lane. They
could not choose. Otherwise my only recourse is to prostrate myself
before the Cross of Nails - the nails of the cross - in the ruins of the old
Coventry Cathedral, and the only words are those inscribed there:
‘Father forgive’. Martin Henig

15
 CAN YOU HEAR A BUGLE’S CALL FROM ST GILES’?
The Oxford University Press War Memorial

T HIS memorial of Portland stone stands in the main Quadrangle of

Oxford University Press, listing
the 45 workers at the Press who
were killed in the First World War, to
which the names of 21 dead from
the Second World War were added
subsequently. Originally it stood just
inside the Great Gate, facing
eastwards towards the then main
entry point from Walton Street but
would not have been evident to
passers-by whenever the entrance
was closed – initially by a substantial
wooden gate (to the left of the first
photo), not the open ironwork
introduced in the 1970s.
The decision to commemorate
the Oxford University Press war dead had been made in mid-1919 and
on 21st July 1919 the Dean of Christ
Church conducted a memorial service in
the Press Quadrangle. The required
sum of £176 was eventually raised and
the memorial dedicated on Tuesday 5th
October 1920.
Until November 1955 the
memorial was the first thing employees
would see on entering the Press each
day, then it was moved out of the way
of the Walton Street entrance and in
November 2008 it was moved again,
this time to its present position at the
other side of the Quadrangle, and was
rededicated by the Vicar of St Barnabas
Church, Jericho.

16
 On 1st June 2017 it was awarded Grade II listed status.
For many years the OUP Ex-Servicemen’s Association ensured
there was a ceremony, and for staff relocating from the London office
in the later 1970s, this may have been the first Act of Remembrance
they experienced in Oxford.
By the late 1980s, as Armistice Day began to be marked as well
as Remembrance Sunday, many shops and supermarkets began making
announcements inviting customers to join in observing a two-minute
silence, with some traffic pulled into the side of the road etc; and
members of the Press (increasingly from Publishing, as the Printing
workforce was gradually reduced until final closure in 1989) would
gather in the Quad.

This grew and was duly sanctioned by OUP’s management who

arranged for a bugler to sound The Last Post from the balcony outside
the office used by the Secretary to the Delegates in the Tower
(immediately above the archway in the photo). So when 11th
November falls on a working day, hundreds of OUP staff and some
retirees continue to gather around the Quad to show their respects at
11.00 am.
Once the reverberation of the gun being fired in South Park
could be heard around Oxford and in the Quad. Does anyone in Jericho
or St Giles’ hear our bugle?
Jim Smith

17
 THOUGHTS ON REMEMBRANCE

A S AN erstwhile student and current lecturer [at St Hilda’s], my

experience of the city of Oxford is filtered through my life within
the university and its constituent colleges. Singing in the choir of St
Giles’ Church, as I have done now for more than five years, is my
deepest interaction with city life.
The commemoration of the First World War has brought home
to me both how separate these two worlds can be and how closely
entwined they truly are. Almost all of Oxford’s colleges display
somewhere within their quadrangles a list of names engraved beneath
the numbers MCMXIV and MCMXVIII - a list of the brave souls lost in
the mud and slaughter of the Great War. Very rarely, however, are
these names a complete roll call of all those connected to the college
who went abroad to fight, and ultimately gave their lives in service of
their country. Rather, these names are those of the students and
Fellows who fell in the war. Rarely will one find there the name of a
scout, a porter or a butler. To find their memorial one does not have to
go far. A bicycle ride will take you to any number of War Memorials in
Oxford and its surrounding villages. Carved into stone as cold as the
inscribed college brass are the names of these young men - sons who
spent their short years cooking and cleaning and carrying, before they
boarded a ship to France, never to return.
While this ultimate segregation of Town and Gown can gnaw at
the conscience for a great part of the year, the annual commemoration
of all Oxford’s war dead can soothe and restore. Every year, outside St
Giles’, at 11:00 on Remembrance Sunday, either in the drizzle or
beneath the crisp November sun, the whole city is united in grief and
gratitude. Representatives of all faiths and creeds, all ages and all
backgrounds, gather together as one to cherish the memories of the
sons, fathers, husbands and brothers whose surfeit of courage and
duty was met only by the cold, callous egalitarianism of death. And in
that sense, on that day, all differences of class and status are erased.
On that day alone the university and the city is knit back together -
names that are separated by oak doors and sandstone walls are as one.
And we remember.
Andrew Sillett

18
 RINGING FOR PEACE IN 1918

T HE illustration shows two pages from a St Giles’ Bellringers’ Record

Book which was begun in 1850, and continued in use until 1979. It
was used mainly to record payments received by the St Giles’ band of
bellringers - not only for regular ringing before Sunday services, but
also for ringing for special occasions of various other kinds: mostly
weddings, but also including ringing to celebrate the coming of peace
in 1918 and 1919:

1918: November 11th

Ringing the bells, on the announcement of the Armistice,
Great European War. £0.15s.0d
1919: June 28th
Peace signed, Great European War. £0.7s.6d
1919: July 19th
Official Peace Day. £0.7s.6d
In 1850, the bells had been increased in number from four to six,
and it can hardly be a coincidence that a new and presumably more

19
formal system of management was established at the same time. Six
ringers were officially appointed (one for each bell); a set of Rules for
the Ringers was printed; and the use of the Record Book also began at
the same time. A transcript of these Rules is available on the church
website at http://www.st-giles-church.org/stgiles/fabric-
history/bells-documents/. I have also prepared digitised transcripts of
all the contents of the Record Book, and an alphabetic index to the
names of all the brides, bridegrooms, churchwardens, persons elected
to public offices, etc, who are mentioned in the Book, and should be
pleased to make these available to anyone interested.
As it happens, the two pages copied here from the Record Book
not only include references to ringing for Peace, but also show
instances of most of the other sources of payments received by the
ringers in 1918/19:
(a) A half-yearly salary of £3.0s.0d for regular ringing on Sundays,
and on major festivals of the church, paid by the Churchwardens
out of parish funds, in return for which all of the six appointed
ringers were expected to ring for half an hour before each of two
services every Sunday. Such salary payments were recorded as
recently as 1959.
(b) £1.10s.0d, also paid by the Churchwardens, for ringing on
four ‘Customary Ringing Days’. These Days had been specified in
Rules published in 1850 as “the Queen’s Birth-Day and
Accession, May 29th, November 5th, and Christmas Eve”, but by
1918 the number had been reduced from five to four, perhaps
following Queen Victoria’s death and replacement on the throne
by King Edward VII. (May 29th is Oak-Apple Day, commemorating
the restoration of King Charles II; November 5th is Guy Fawkes
Day)
(c) £0.5s.0d from Hendy’s Charity
(d) A guinea (£1.1s.0d) for ringing for weddings, presumably paid
by the brides or bridegrooms or their families.
(e) £0.6s.0d per person for ringing to mark the election and
annual re-election of Churchwardens, and also for some
elections as City Councillors and Aldermen, Sheriff, Mayor, and
Members of Parliament – apparently paid (more or less
voluntarily) by those thus elected.

20
 (f) Ringing for other special occasions, usually £0.7s.6d – but
twice this amount on the 1918 Armistice Day. (Was this larger
amount paid just to mark the importance of the occasion, or did
the ringers ring for twice as long as usual?)
Payments of salary, payments for ringing on the ‘Customary
Ringing Days’, and payments from Hendy’s Charity, at only slightly
increased levels, were recorded up to 1958, but must have ceased soon
after that date. At present, it is only ringing for weddings which the
ringers are still paid for.
John Pusey, Captain of Ringers
__________________________________________________________

NOTES FROM THE GREAT WAR ON A LOST RELATIVE -

FRANK DODSWORTH HAYDON

T HE DETAILS of this are sketchy, I’m afraid, as they were passed

down through generations of my family from my grandfather who
died in 1933 - a year before I was born.
My uncle Frank joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force early in
the Great War. No-one seems to know why he enlisted in the Canadian
Army rather than the Home forces.
In the autumn of 1917 my grandparents were informed by the
War Office that Frank was missing - presumed dead. He had been
fighting somewhere in northern France.
Nine years later, in 1926, they received a message telling them
that Frank’s remains had been unearthed by a farmer who was
ploughing his land - apparently near the area where he had been
reported missing earlier. Obviously there would have been little
chance of identification after this amount of time but discovered with
his body was the engraved silver cigarette case which my grandfather
had given him for his 21st birthday.
I have tried to gain more information on-line to no avail, and
have visited the area we think might be roughly where he fell. There
was nothing on the Menin Gate. I doubt if we shall ever find out where
- and indeed if - he was buried.
Sue Street

21
 FAMILY RECOLLECTIONS OF WW1

O VER the last four years there have been salutes, flypasts, vigils,
and tributes paid by all quarters, and much done to honour those
killed in the horrors of the Great War. And quite rightly so: their
sacrifices made possible our freedom, and we will all, ever, be thankful.
But it’s the personal and family recollections that, for me, bring home a
fuller story of the war and the impact it had on ordinary people.
My own family were surprisingly lucky during that war. My
mother’s side of the family were all in India for the duration, and only
started to drift back to Britain after Independence, while there are little
or no records from my father’s
side.
My grandmother (on my
father’s side) however used to tell
me tales of her father, my great-
grandfather, and his time in
uniform. His name was Frank
Kittle, but she always referred to
him as ‘Pops’, a generational name
that happily remains with us.
When I was a child she often
told me how much I reminded her
of him … she described how his
hair was exactly like mine; ginger
and much like a wire brush. From
the few photographs we have of him, I can sympathise with the
struggles he must have had to keep his mop in order!
The photograph of him before he went to the trenches shows a
thin, nervous, smile, and a rather optimistic attempt to Brylcream
down the wire wool with a side parting. In the photo he must be in his
mid-20s, and has the badge of the Royal Garrison Artillery on his
shoulder.
Shortly after the photo was taken, he was sent to France, and
was gassed at the Somme while serving with one of the Brigades of The
Royal Field Artillery.
He was lucky to live, and was invalided back to his native Norfolk.
He spent time recuperating from the effects of the mustard gas at

22
hospitals in Bristol and Great Yarmouth, but had a hacking, rattling,
cough till the day he died. A photo of
him taken some years later, still in his
uniform, shows a more confident
face, and the slightest hint of a smile.
His cough stayed with him all
his life, and Dad describes how he
was always ill and bronchial.
He served as both a
Policeman and Fireman in and
around Great Yarmouth during both
the interwar period, and during the
Second World War.
A family story describes one
of his early police rounds on a cold
foggy Norfolk morning in about
1943. Pops was the only
policeman on duty when a local
fisherman caught a German U-Boat
in his nets, and with a certain
brave optimism, towed it into
Yarmouth harbour. The U-Boat
had lost power from its engines
after being torpedoed, but the
crew were unharmed.
As the Duty Officer, Pops
took the surrender of the U-Boat
Captain and his crew, and accepted
a set of the boat’s binoculars as a
token of friendship. While this
may or may not actually be true, it
does help to explain the Nazi U-
Boat binoculars that have been
kicking about for years!
This is him in his Police uniform some years later, with his
bicycle. And a definite smile.
Tim Myatt

23
 REMEMBERING A VETERAN OF THE GREAT WAR

W HEN I was a student in Hull during the early 1970s I volunteered

to visit long-term patients in De La Pole Hospital, formerly
known as Kingston Upon Hull Borough Asylum. I was with a group that
visited once a week. The hospital had been built in the 1880s and beds
were ranged along the walls. In the centre of the room were plastic-
cushioned armchairs. There was a smell of disinfectant and
institutional cooking. De La Pole Hospital was one of many institutions
that had attempted to treat ‘shell-shocked’ patients. It was a grim
atmosphere but the Consultant in charge seemed a cheerful man.
We arrived at 7:00 pm and left by 9:00 pm. The nursing staff
were anxious to put the ward to bed and we were anxious to be away.
The patients were all elderly. A few wandered restlessly; most sat on
their beds.
Conversations were generally baffling but one patient stood out.
We knew nothing of his story save that he was a veteran of World War
One: the Great War as his generation would have known it. I am
almost sure we were his only visitors. Communication, it turned out,
was beyond us. I never heard him answer a question with anything but
his Army service number and muttered expletives. He was always on
his own. If someone sat beside him he would shift in his chair,
hunching his shoulders as if gasping for breath.
I have no idea of what his medical records would have shown.
We believed he had been in the hospital his entire adult life, or at least
from the moment he was discharged from the service.
I may have been told his name; if so I have long forgotten it.
Perhaps in his early days at the hospital his story was known. Perhaps
there were visits from family and friends and the hope that something
like normal life could be resumed. What we do know is that at some
stage his world contracted. Fifty years after the Armistice he was a
casualty with no memorial. He had no stories that he knew how to tell.
No creased photographs of himself in uniform.
His war had been superseded by another great war, which in
turn had been overtaken by a Cold War, which in turn resolved into
new conflicts and fractured alliances. His story would never be told,
could never be told. It may be that a parish magazine in Oxford is his
only remembrance. Nick Jameson

24
 POIGNANT MEMORIES

S EVERAL years ago, I went to France and Belgium on a coach tour of

the Cemeteries and Memorials of the First World War. The two
places that have remained very much in my memory are the Tyne Cot
Memorial and Cemetery, and the Menin Gate.

Tyne Cot Cemetery

At Tyne Cot, I remember standing by the Memorial Wall, and

gazing down at row upon neat row of white headstones, as far as I
could see. On a closer look at these headstones, many were inscribed
“An Unknown Soldier”. I found this very poignant, thinking of their
loved ones. The 11,954 British and Commonwealth soldiers who lost
their lives in the battles around Ypres are buried here.
My visit to the Menin Gate had an even greater effect on me as
54,611 British and Commonwealth soldiers who were killed, or
“Missing, presumed dead” with no known grave, are commemorated
on the walls of the Memorial Arch, which was built of Portland Stone,
after the Great War was over. The effect of looking at all those long
columns of names, and from just one theatre of war, made the often-
quoted phrase, “The loss of a whole generation” so much more
meaningful to me. I left feeling very humbled and thoughtful and so
saddened by the great loss of life. It is something that I will never
forget.
Betty Couldrey

25
 KEEPING THE HOME FIRES BURNING
They were summoned from the hillside, they were called in from the glen,
And the country found them ready at the stirring call for men
Let no tears add to their hardships as the soldiers pass along,
And although your heart is breaking, make it sing this cheery song: ….

T HE other contributors have written very movingly about many

different aspects of remembrance. My piece focuses on just one
person, who remained at home, but who I hope can represent some of
the non-combatants from towns and villages across the country whose
lives would be for ever changed by the Great War.
Annie Cooper was born in Riseley,
Bedfordshire, in 1892, one of a large
family. Her father, John, worked with
farm horses and her mother, Emma,
made “pillow lace” – a cottage industry.
The boys were probably destined to
become agricultural labourers, while the
girls would go “into service”. (Annie’s
older sister Emily worked at a house in
Fyfield Road, Oxford, for a time). In
1904 the Coopers were living in Milton
Ernest and Annie, after leaving
Elementary School, came to work for my
grandparents, Richard and Rebecca
Lawrence, when their first child, Joe,
was born. She arrived as a timid 12-year
old, with all her possessions in a brown
tin trunk (which went everywhere with her for the rest of her life).
Annie remained with Gran and Grandad and in due course
helped to look after Ruth (born 1906) and moved with them when they
purchased a farm in Warfield, Berkshire, where my father, Stanley was
born in 1916. Grandad was not called up, but his men and most of his
horses were commandeered for the war (though he did manage to
hide his favourite, called National Lassie). This meant that all those
who were left had to help out in any way they could with the work on
the farm – Annie was good with horses but frightened of cows, having
once been chased by a herd of them.

26
 Unfortunately Gran and Grandad lost everything in the post war
Depression of the 1930s but Annie stayed on with them, and after they
died she continued to live either with my aunt or my parents, having
long since become a much-loved member of our family (though she
always kept in touch with her sisters and brothers). My father was
devoted to Annie, and I was named after her.
I was only 18 when she died in 1967, and by then the Great
War seemed very long ago and was hardly spoken of, though I knew
that at least three of her brothers
had served in the Army. (Annie used
to say how comforting the song Keep
the Home Fires Burning was, for the
folk left at home).
Her brother Henry survived
the war, having ended up as a
Sapper with the Royal Engineers and
working on the railway in Palestine
from 1918 until he was demobbed in
1919. Another brother, William,
was badly gassed and was “never the
same again”.
The baby of the family,
Ernest (born 1898), volunteered to
serve with the Bedfordshire
Regiment as soon as he was old
enough, and was killed on 27th June
1917. He is buried in Philosophe British Cemetery, Mazingarbe. When
Annie died, among the contents of her tin trunk was a postcard from
him to her, written (in pencil) on 18th June, just a few days before his
death.
One of my earliest memories is of Annie teaching me to knit. I
also recall that she had a stock of cautionary tales for small children
such as the (probably apocryphal) one about a greedy little boy who
saw a bowl of what he thought was milk and quickly drank it all – only
to find that it was actually laundry starch so it made him rather unwell!
My cousin and I went to Milton Ernest a couple of years ago to
have a look round, and we saw the parish church where Annie’s

27
brothers used to sing in the choir, and the
river where the village children used to
play.
Annie was shrewd; hardworking;
loyal; generous – and very stubborn! She
was not greatly interested in world events
and never went out of England – the home
and family was her key focus, and her
memory for birthdays and anniversaries
was phenomenal. While my parents were
working abroad she used to write to them
regularly in her neat copperplate script.
She had a
strong,
unquestio
ning, faith which I think helped to
sustain her throughout her life. In my
research for this piece, I found the
certificate she was given at her
Confirmation at Warfield – by the
Bishop of Oxford - in April 1914.
Sadly, Annie never had a house
or family of her own. There must have
been a “young man” she was “walking
out with”, who was killed in the war
(probably the person who sent her the
postcard, above), and of course she
then became just one of a whole
generation of “surplus women”.
I suppose there must have been some comfort for Annie, and
all the others like her who had lost loved ones, that this had been “The
war to end all wars”. Only of course we know now that it wasn’t.
Anne Dutton
O GOD, who wouldest fold both heaven and earth in a single peace: let
the design of thy great love lighten upon the waste of our wraths and
sorrows; and give peace to thy Church, peace among nations, peace in
our dwellings, and peace in our hearts. Amen. (Eric Milner-White)

28
 KILLED IN ACTION: EDWARD THOMAS
(Killed at the Battle of Arras, 9th April 1917)

H APPY the man whose home is still

In Nature’s green and peaceful ways;
To wake and hear the birds so loud,
That scream for joy to see the sun
Is shouldering past a sullen cloud.
And we have known those days, when we
Would wait to hear the cuckoo first;
When you and I, with thoughtful mind,
Would help a bird to hide her nest,
For fear of other hands less kind.
But thou, my friend, art lying dead:
War, with its hell-born childishness,
Has claimed thy life, with many more:
The man that loved this England well,
And never left it once before. W H Davies (1871-1940)

__________________________________________________________

O UR Father,
which art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy Name;
Thy kingdom come;
Thy will be done;
in earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive them that
trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation;
But deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
the power and the glory,
for ever and ever.
Amen.
(From the Book of Common Prayer)
V ATER unser im Himmel,
geheiligt werde dein
Name; dein Reich komme;
dein Wille geschehe, wie im
Himmel so auf Erden. Unser
tägliches Brot gib uns heute.
Und vergib uns unsere
Schuld, wie auch wir
vergeben unsern Schuldigern;
und führe uns nicht in
Versuchung, sondern erlöse
uns von dem Bösen.
Denn dein ist das Reich und
die Kraft und die Herrlichkeit
in Ewigkeit. Amen.

29
 REFLECTIONS ON REMEMBRANCE

T HE commemoration of the First World War, for me, has been the
self-imposed undertaking of finding out about the lives of the 18
men named on the War Memorial. Individuals different from each
other in so many ways, but linked together by common feelings of
patriotism, honour, duty and courage – qualities which seem out of
step, even denigrated, for many of us today. Building pictures in my
mind of each man has helped me to get some sort of feel for the social
and political values and attitudes of their time, and to recognise the
effects of hindsight which colour our own attitudes towards that War
today.
As a culmination to my personal remembrance of the War, in
July this year I went with seven other members of the family (there
were four generations) to Soissons, about 60 miles north-east of Paris.
There we visited the Commonwealth War Graves Commission
Memorial, unveiled in 1928 close to the 12th century cathedral. It is not
one of the great memorials like Thiepval (with the 72,000 names) or
the Menin Gate (with 54,000). My father-in-law’s name is one of only
some 4,000 names engraved on the Soissons Memorial, for the men
killed in the fighting in that area in the last months of the War, and for
whom there are no known graves.
Standing by that Memorial, on one of the hottest days of this
year’s summer, we felt a profound silence despite the pleasant hum
and bustle of a small market town going on all round us. Three
thoughts were uppermost in our minds. First of all - the man we had
come to honour – someone none of us had ever known but whose life
and death had affected all our own lives. Then his wife, a widow for 62
years, whom all but the youngest of us had known and could
remember, now a reminder to us of all the countless other widows and
families whose lives were bereft and changed forever by the War. And
lastly, I think we were all overwhelmed by the sight of the 4,000 other
names on the Memorial, standing for the dead millions on both sides of
the conflict and across the world.
This visit to Soissons has taken me out of the almost comforting
zone of local family history, and the absorbing search for details of
those particular 18 lives, that I had become so engrossed in over the
last four years. It brought me back full-circle to face the brutal facts

30
about the War – the unbelievable waste, the devastation and the loss.
It brought me back to the present day and to the desperate need to
continue the search for resolution of conflicts and the search for peace.
Alison Bickmore
__________________________________________________________

ST GILES’ WAR MEMORIAL

In memory of those who gave their lives in the Great War

and for whom prayers were offered in this church.

(Names in alphabetical order)

Lance Corp Arthur Ernest Baker (1915)

Pte Ernest Leonard Bennett (1916)
Lt Col David Francis Bickmore DSO (1918)
Cdr John Bywater-Ward RN (1919)
Pte Christopher Choldcroft (1916)
Capt Roger James Cholmeley MC (1919)
Rev Thomas Parker George CF (1918)
Sgt Frederick Henry Hastings (1916)
Capt Reginald Drury Hodgson (1918)
Lt Alban John Benedict Hudson MC (1917)
Pte Francis Lewis Hudson (1916)
Lt Victor Jessel (1917)
nd
2 Lt Henry Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley (1915)
Lt Ronald William Poulton Palmer (1915)
Maj Harry William Robinson (1918)
Maj Frederick Tom Skinner (1916)
Pte Francis John William Slay (1918)
Pte Reginald Ernest Webster (1916)

31
 CANON CHARLES CUTHBERT INGE (1868–1957)
VICAR OF ST GILES’, OXFORD, FROM 1913–1937
Charles C Inge was the son of Rev William Inge (1829-1903), later provost of Worcester
College, Oxford. His brother was William Ralph Inge (1860-1954), later Dean of St
Paul’s Cathedral. He was a Demy at Magdalen from 1887-1892; and was awarded his
BA in 1891 and MA in 1894. After ordination he was Curate of the Eton Mission in
Hackney Wick (1894-96). He was subsequently Curate of Cranleigh, Surrey (1896-1906),
Vicar of Holmwood, Surrey (1906-13), Vicar of St Giles’, Oxford (1913-37) and Rural
Dean of Oxford (1925-37). In 1904 he married Arabella Hamilton, daughter of Lt Col C
H Sams and they had two sons and three daughters. He was an honorary canon of
Christ Church 1933-1948.

C ANON Inge (pronounced to rhyme with string, not hinge) was

Vicar of St Giles’ all through the Great War, and I have been inter-
ested to read his monthly letters in the Parish Magazines of that time.
Unfortunately I have not been able to find out very much about him,
and despite the best efforts of the archivist at Magdalen and various
people at Christ Church, I have not yet been able to obtain a
photograph. (It is possible that Eton might have one in their archive.)
In his farewell letter (September 1937 magazine) he wrote: …..
“The long list of Vicars which hangs in Church shews only one name,
that of Dr John Nichols, Vicar from 1764 to 1789, which covers so long
a period as this. …… I look back on many tasks which we have faced
together. I am leaving the Church in good order, and in many ways
improved by what has been done in it since I came. The restoration of
the Chancel has brought back to it not only light, but the ancient
beauty which had been a good deal impaired by unworthy decoration;
the Organ has been rebuilt, and the memorial screen placed in front of
it; the heating and the lighting have been made satisfactory; two bells
have been added to complete our peal of eight. The Churchyard, too,
is in better order than ever before and is generally recognised as part
of the beauty of Oxford. Our Parish Room has been enlarged, and is
proving essential to the work of the Parish.
“I do not care to try to estimate the spiritual progress of the
Parish. There have been so many changes in our population, so much
destruction of house property, that it is impossible to compare our
present state with that of a quarter of a century ago. And the habits of
people everywhere have so greatly changed in directions which do not
encourage Church attendance, that one cannot count heads in order to
determine the religious condition of the Parish. …..”

32
 CHAPLAINS IN THE GREAT WAR

O
th
N 11 November 1918, there were 878 Anglican chaplains on
the Western Front alone, alongside a similar total from other
denominations. They were “temporary chaplains”, usually seconded
from their home parish with their bishop’s approval. Senior Army
staff saw the chaplains’ role as bolstering morale and encouraging
the troops. When well behind the lines, chaplains worked for the
welfare of the men in their units alongside leading church parades.
At the Front, they ministered to the wounded and dying, often sup-
porting medical staff as stretcher-bearers. Holy Communion was
offered to the living and the burial service was said over
innumerable ad hoc graves. A total of 98 Anglican chaplains died as
a consequence of the conflict.
One of the best-known chaplains was Woodbine Willie - the
nickname given to Rev Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy because he handed
out cigarettes and Bibles to soldiers leaving Rouen for the front. In
1916 he was at the Somme among the troops on a day when 21,000
were killed and 35,000 injured. In his diary, he wrote about
accompanying the men digging trenches into No Man’s Land: ‘Fear
came. There was a pain underneath my belt. Of course, I had to go. It
was the parish. We crept out. We could not get out into the two-foot
ditch that they had made, it was crowded with men. We went along
the edge. I whispered some inane remark as I passed by and was
rewarded with a grin which even darkness could not hide and often
when I passed with the muttered comment, “Gor blimey if it ain’t the
Padre!” Vaguely I felt that this journey was worthwhile.’
The gallantry of those Chaplains who served on the Front-line
was consistently recognised and rewarded, with over 120 receiving
the Military Cross and two being awarded the Victoria Cross.
Rev Thomas Parker George, (commemorated on our War
Memorial), was Curate of St Giles’ from 1911-1913. He was
appointed Chaplain to the Forces 4 th Class and posted to France with
the 7th Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry in September 1914. He was
with the troops at Ypres, Belgium, during the autumn of that year,
but his health broke down under the strain and by November 1915
he had relinquished his commission. He never really recovered and
died in West Africa on 12 th March 1918.
 Sources: www.churchofengland.org; www.biblesociety.org.uk; Parish News, Nov 2017

33
 DATES FOR YOUR DIARY – NOVEMBER 2018
Thursday 1st Nov All Saints’ Day
12:30 pm Talk – 3,000 Years of Christian Writings

Sunday 4th ALL SAINTS’ SUNDAY

6:30 pm Fauré Requiem

Thursday 8th Saints and Martyrs of England

12:30 pm Talk – Engaging Emptiness

Saturday 10th St Leo the Great, Bishop of Rome, 461

7:30 pm Art Themen jazz concert

Sunday 11th REMEMBRANCE SUNDAY

11:00 am Act of Remembrance at the City War Memorial,
followed by shortened service of Holy Communion
in St Giles’

Thursday 15th
12:30 pm Talk – Pertinent Questions. Provocative Answers

Saturday 17th St Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln, 1200

7:30 pm Brickwork Lizards jazz concert

Thursday 22nd St Cecilia, Martyr at Rome, c 230

12:30 pm Talk – Buddhist Stories to Ponder

Saturday 24th
7:30 pm Tommaso Starace jazz concert

Sunday 25th CHRIST THE KING

Thursday 29th
12:30 pm Talk –Stories of the Prophets

Saturday 1st Dec Charles de Foucauld, Hermit in the Sahara, 1916

7:30 pm David Gordon Trio jazz concert

Sunday 2nd THE FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT

6:30 pm Joint Advent Carol Service at St Margaret’s

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 ST GILES’ MUSIC LIST - NOVEMBER 2018

Sunday 4th November – All Saints’ Sunday

10:30 am Holy Communion 6:30 pm Fauré Requiem

Victoria, O Quam Gloriosum
Gibbons, Lord, grant grace
Mozart, Missa Brevis in B Flat
(Gloria)

Sunday 11th – Remembrance Sunday

Holy Communion 6:30 pm Evensong

(St Giles’ Singers)
Vaughan Williams, O How Harris, Though I Speak with the
Amiable Tongues of Men
Vaughan Williams, The Call

Sunday 18th – The Second Sunday before Advent

10:30 am Holy Communion 6:30 pm Choral Evensong

(St Giles’ Singers) (St Giles’ Choir)
Bainton, And I saw a new Heaven Tomkins, Seventh Evening Service
Bairstow, Let all Mortal Flesh Tomkins, I will lift up mine eyes
keep Silence Responses: Tomkins

Sunday 25th – Christ the King

10:30 am Holy Communion 6:30 pm Choral Evensong

(St Giles’ Girls’ Choir)
Vaughan Williams, Let All the Weelkes, Sixth Service
World Weelkes, Rejoice in the Lord
Mendelssohn, If with all your Responses: Smith
Heart
Gibbons, O God the King of Glory
Mozart, Missa Brevis in D (Gloria)

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 ALL SOULS’ DAY – 2nd NOVEMBER

T HE believer’s pilgrimage of faith is lived out with the mutual

support of all the people of God. In Christ all the faithful, both
living and departed, are bound together in a communion of prayer.
This simple, agreed statement, from the Anglican-Roman Catholic
International Commission
explains the purpose of
the celebration on this
day. Since its foundation,
Christians have recognised
that the Church, the
ecclesia, the assembled
people of God, is at its
most perfect when it
recognises its unity in
God’s redeeming love with
all who have said, who say
now, and who will say in
the fullness of time, “Jesus
is Lord”.

A COLLECT FOR ALL SOULS’ DAY

E TERNAL God, our Maker and Redeemer,

grant us, with all the faithful departed,
the sure benefits of your Son’s saving passion and glorious resurrection
that, in the last day,
when you gather up all things in Christ,
we may with them enjoy the fullness of your promises;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.
(Source: Exciting Holiness, 1997)

 Fauré Requiem Eucharist at St Giles’ on Sunday 4th November 2018

at 6:30 pm. If you would like your loved ones to be remembered at
this service, please add their names to the list at the back of the
church.

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