They shall grow not old

There are some words which seem to mean more to me every time I hear them. One example which seems more powerful every year is the exhortation which precedes the two minute silence on Rememberance Sunday and the Kohima epitaph which follows the silence.

Almost everyone who reads this will know these verses but I make no apologies for repeating them. By comparison with these timeless words anything else I could write here today would seem too trivial.

"They shall grow not old as we that are left grow old.
Age shall not weary them nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
we will remember them."

And after the silence another veteran often a representative from the Burma Star Association reads the words from the Kohima memorial to the fallen of the Burma campaign:-

"When you go home tell them of us and say
for your tomorrow we gave our today."

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