20-Sep-2024

A Poem on International Day of Peace 2024

Saturday 21 September marks the 25th anniversary of the United Nations adoption of the Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace and the 23rd anniversary of the International Day of Peace.

This year’s theme is that of cultivating a culture of peace through education, an important one in the current climate of conflicts we are facing throughout the world.

Memorials to past conflicts, like the British Normandy Memorial, are powerful reminders of the costs of conflict. But they can be places where we can begin to learn from our mistakes. As Nicholas Witchell, our founding Trustee, says about the Memorial: “Our hope now is that the British Normandy Memorial can be a place where the sacrifices of 1944 can be remembered and understood by people from many nations for many generations to come.” The opening of the Winston Churchill Centre for Education and Learning, the second phase of the Memorial project, is designed to educate and remind young people about those who paid the ultimate price for freedom.

We should all aspire to let that learning enable us to live peacefully. Conflict brings destruction but peace can bring opportunities, creativity and prosperity to make our lives better. In 1939 we went to war to regain peace. In June 1944, the Allied forces landed in Normandy, an action which marked the beginning of the end of the Second World War in Europe and the hope that peace could return.

But it was not achieved without a huge sacrifice. David Rhys Geraint Jones, a soldier and poet serving with 3rd Battalion, Monmouthshire Regiment, was one of the many who made the ultimate sacrifice in Normandy. He landed on 15 June 1944 died aged 22 on 28 June.

He wrote a number of poems but a line found in his poem ‘The Light of day Is Cold and Grey’, written in 1944 sums up the reason for that sacrifice: “Your peace is bought with mine”. We should strive to honour that sacrifice and use learning to embrace Peace for now and future generations.

Here is his poem in full:

The light of day is cold and grey and there is no more peace,
By the high white moon-washed walls, where we laughed and where we sung;
And I can’t go back to those days of short unthinking ease,
When I was very foolish and you were very young.
For you the laurel and the rose will bloom, and you will see
The dawn’s delight, firelight on rafters, wind, seas, and thunder,
Children asleep and dreams and hearts at ease, when life will be,
Even at its close, a quiet and an ageless wonder.
For me the poppies soon will dance and sway in Haute Avesnes:
The sunrise of my love slides into dusk, its day untasted:
Yet as I lie, turf-clad, and freed of passion, and of pain,
I find my sacrifice of golden things not wasted;
Your peace is bought with mine, and I am paid in full, and well,
If but the echo of your laughter reaches me in hell.

For more on David’s story, read here.

Left-Right: Lt Geraint Jones, Capt Solomon, Lt Lloyd, Capt Peter Andrews, Capt Fox, Lt Horwood. The photo was taken at Wassand Hall in Yorkshire between February and April 1944. The man in the saddle is his close friend at the time Captain Peter Andrews.