A few days ago, we were sitting quietly in the office at Cambridge , when we heard the low rumbling of a plane. The noise of planes is not unusual but they usually come overhead with a jet engine roar or the quiet calmness of a Cessna 2 seater.
This plane was a Dakota, and as it flew overhead we couldn’t help but look out at the window and sense the memory of all that plane had seen 70 years ago.
What strikes me about all the commemorations about the D Day landings is the elderly men, now in wheelchairs or struggling to walk, but getting to that place in France, where as young men in their late teens and early twenties, they emerged from the boats into the seas, straight into the firing guns.
What courage! What strength! And what conviction?
And the 90 year old man who made his own way from his Care Home in Hove to get there, courage, strength and conviction.
This day that meant so much to the eventual end of the war. The joining of nations fighting in desperation for peace and for freedom.
The Four Freedoms Speech in 1941 as expressed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt were and still are fundamental for all people in the world.
Freedom of Speech
Freedom of Worship
Freedom from Want
Freedom from Fear
A time now to remember the people who gave their lives for those freedoms for us and a time to look forward to how we can still ensure that tyranny does not succeed and The Four Freedoms can still be our goal for all people.
Rev’d Sue Martin
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