Sunday 10th November - Grateful Villages

 I am a member of a zoom church congregation serving a number of small villages in Leicestershire  - that's the miracle of modern technology that I can attend via zoom from where I live in Sussex!

Today, of course was the Remeberance Service, during which I was reminded of the Grateful Villages, where all of the menfolk returned from the First World War. The names of the fallen soldiers were read out, village by village, but three of the villages are Grateful Villages.

Another village, Leigh, in Rutland, is also a Grateful Village with this plaque inside the church

The villagers were not untouched by the tragedy of war; as an older member of the congregation pointed out, two of the men who grew up in a Grateful Village had moved to a neighbouring village, and their names were on that memorial.

I doubt there was a family in the land who did not lose a relative. 

As the leader of the service said, every name read out was a real person, a member of a family, life lost. The nemory of the deaths of both my great-uncles aged 21 and 23 continue in my family to this day.

We will remember them.