Earl of Shrewsbury
Main Page: Earl of Shrewsbury (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)
The Earl of Shrewsbury (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for providing your Lordships with this opportunity to debate this most important of subjects today.
“Tread softly here! Go reverently and slow!
Yea, let your soul go down upon its knees,
And with bowed head and heart abased strive hard
To grasp the future gain in this sore loss!
For not one foot of this dank sod but drank
Its surfeit of the blood of gallant men.
Who, for their faith, their hope,—for Life and Liberty,
Here made the sacrifice,—here gave their lives.
And gave right willingly—for you and me.
From this vast altar—pile the souls of men
Sped up to God in countless multitudes:
On this grim cratered ridge they gave their all.
And, giving, won
The peace of Heaven and Immortality.
Our hearts go out to them in boundless gratitude:
If ours—then God’s: for His vast charity
All sees, all knows, all comprehends—save bounds.
He has repaid their sacrifice:—and we—?
God help us if we fail to pay our debt
In fullest full and all unstintingly!”
Those moving lines were written by John Oxenham and are on a bronze plaque at Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Memorial in the Somme. I had the great privilege of visiting that battlefield, cemetery and memorial earlier this month. On the first day of the Battle of the Somme, 1 July 1916, at 0720 hours, 700 Newfoundlanders from the Royal Newfoundland Regiment went over the top and were cut down by withering German machine-gun fire. The battle lasted less than 30 minutes. Only 61 returned. Their memorial is a bronze caribou on a hill of rocks set with plants native to Newfoundland. It is, quite simply, breathtakingly beautiful.
I spent three days visiting Vimy Ridge and the surrounding cemeteries. I visited the Somme and Ypres. I visited Thiepval Memorial, designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens. I paid my respects to the graves of soldiers from the South Staffordshire Regiment—from my home county—and in particular the grave of Sapper Thomas Brough from Cannock, who was killed by a sniper’s bullet while collecting water for a brew on Christmas morning 1915. He is buried at Railway Dugouts Burial Ground, Transport Farm. Sapper Brough was 47 years-old, so too old to fight. He was only there because he wished to be with his sons. He is the great-grandfather of two friends who accompanied me on the trip. They visited their great-grandfather’s grave—with great emotion.
In Warlencourt British Cemetery, littered with the graves of unknown soldiers all with the epitaph “known to God”, I discovered a headstone to Private A Jowett with a wonderful inscription:
“He sleeps with England’s heroes in the watchful care of God”.
It was incredibly moving. I pay tribute to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which tends the thousands of cemeteries and memorials to the highest possible standards. It does a fantastic job. On the last night, we went to the Menin Gate in Ypres for the 8 pm service of remembrance. We listened to the “Last Post” being trumpeted and “Abide with Me” sung by a Welsh male voice choir. With around 3,000 silent worshippers, we paid our respects to the fallen, without whose sacrifice we would not enjoy the freedoms and the privileged lives that we lead today.
When I was a teenager, my father often took me to visit the First World War memorials. When my sons were teenagers, I took them. My seven year-old grandson has just been with his father, doing exactly the same. It is so important that we ensure that younger generations are encouraged to learn about and appreciate the vast sacrifice of human life that was the Great War. Both I and my friends were touched to see the messages left on the memorials by countless school parties from all over the United Kingdom. We should applaud their noble efforts.
Finally, I am a Staffordshire man and very proud of it. My grandfather died while serving in the Royal Horse Guards in 1915. My great-grandfather sourced and trained horses for the cavalry at our former home, Ingestre, in Staffordshire. He also manufactured Talbot cars as ambulances for the military. I am extremely proud to have in my home county the National Memorial Arboretum at Alrewas. It is a wonderful place of peace and tranquillity. I was delighted to learn recently of moves afoot to create a memorial there to all the horses killed in the Great War—those magnificent, unquestioning, loyal servants of man who died in their hundreds of thousands and in appalling conditions, from cavalry charges to artillery and poison gas attacks. It is right that they, too, should be remembered in perpetuity.