Remembrance and Beyond the Deepening Shadow

Sunday, 11th November 2018 marked the Centenary of the ending of the First World War.  We attended the service at our local war memorial and The Boy Child wore my old RAF beret.We planted two crosses of remembrance this year – one for Flying Officer Roy Stewart Wilson and one for my four of my paternal ancestors, four cousins and two of them brothers, all lost in the Great War.

In the week running up to Remembrance Day, the Tower of London marked the Centenary of the Armistice with an epic light and sound show, staged in the Tower’s moat.

Source

Beyond the Deepening Shadow was an evolving installation, which unfolded each evening over the course of four hours, between 17:00 and 21:00 each evening, with the Tower moat gradually becoming illuminated by individual flames.

The unfolding visual spectacle was accompanied by a specially-commissioned sound installation; a sonic exploration of the shifting tide of political alliances, friendship, love and loss in war.  At the centre of the sound installation lay a new choral work, with words from War Poet Mary Borden’s Sonnets to a Soldier.

That all sounds marvellous, doesn’t it?  In reality, the evening we went (at around 17.30) was jam-packed, dangerously so, with the space at the castle’s walls four or five people deep.  Those at the front were not willing to surrender their space in any way.

Any sense of occasion was lost.

But despite that, I’m glad we went and were able to catch a glimpse of what was a once in a lifetime event.

Lest we forget.