Although there were representatives of other faiths at the Cenotaph this morning, the religious part of the remembrance ceremony was Christian, as usual. Today and on Tuesday (Armistice Day, 11th November), Christian ceremonial will predominate, regardless of the fact that services personnel are of all faiths and none, and that those who join them on Remembrance Day are also a diverse cross-section of society. To be wholly inclusive, such ceremonial should be completely secular, allowing those who are religious to have separate ceremonies afterwards.

Not many people will know that there is now a UK Armed Forces Humanist Association, which welcomes new members. Those who serve in the armed forces should not be expected to participate in religious ceremonial that has no relevance to them.

Read our previous posts on 11/11 here.

The Soldiers At Lauro
Italy, January 1943
Spike Milligan

Young are our dead
Like babies they lie
The wombs they blest once
Not healed dry
And yet too soon
Into each space
A cold earth falls
On colder face.
Quite still they lie
These fresh-cut reeds
Clutched in earth
Like winter seeds
But they will not bloom
When called by spring
To burst with leaf
And blossoming
They sleep on
In silent dust
As crosses rot
And helmets rust.

Spike was a bombardier in the Royal Artillery in North Africa and Italy in WW2.