Written by John Crockford-Hawley

NOVEMBER is dark and dismal.

All Hallows Eve (31 Oct), All Saints’ (1 Nov), All Souls’ (2 Nov), Guy Fawkes (5 Nov), Remembrance Sunday (10 Nov) and Armistice Day (11 Nov) should cause us to reflect on death and to question our propensity for conflict and slaughter.

I’m part of the post-war baby boom. I just missed conscription, have never killed ‘for king or country’ nor won medals for gallantry and have never feared my home might be flattened by air raid.

WW1 claimed one grandfather who lies to this day somewhere in a forgotten French field.

The other was gassed and suffered what we would now call post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

My father served in WW2 as a medic. He relieved concentration camps though seldom talked about it. Like many he buried the darkness of those ghastly times.

And so, in time honoured tradition, I’ve bought a red poppy and will stand for two minutes at 11am on Sunday 10th in Grove Park and at 11am on Monday 11th in High Street, ponder my forebears’ experiences, give thanks that I have never been called upon to make any life-threatening sacrifice, and ask a silent ‘what if?’.

It isn’t an occasion for making political statements about war and it’s certainly not about glorification.

It’s calm, reflective remembrance with all Royal British Legion poppy sale proceeds going to those in dire need.

As Mayor it falls to me to represent the whole town, to lay the civic wreath and to remember all Westonians who died on service, in their blitzed homes, or in subsequent conflicts.

Those two poignant minutes, between Last Post and Reveille, affect people in different ways.

Nobody orders silence: it just happens. Veteran or youngster, uniform or hoodie, long standing resident or recent arrival the numbers grow year by year.

Phones remain silent, selfies are resisted, Weston stops.

These are truly the most self-imposed and respectful two minutes of our collective community being.

Grove Park War Memorial

The First World War’s mechanised slaughter coupled with an inability to repatriate the fallen created a need for tangible points of remembrance.

In 1920 Edward Lutyens designed a simple Cenotaph (from the Greek word for an empty tomb) in Whitehall to honour all regardless of rank, race or creed.

Two years later Weston’s memorial was unveiled in Grove Park.

This uncluttered Portland Stone plinth with modest bronze name panels by architect Charles Cave provides a sound base for Royal Academician sculptor Alfred Drury’s Angel of Peace.

She holds aloft the olive branch in tender, pleading hope that humanity might learn a lesson: it didn’t, and probably never will.