Today we held our Remembrance Service, here at St Mark’s School. A service that we hold very dear to our hearts and we were not going to let anything get in the way of being able to honour those who died or showed great courage during the great war.....and remembering them.
Each class made a wreath and a wooden heart with the name of a soldier displayed in the memorial wall in St Mark’s church. Classes took turns to hang the hearts and lay the wreaths outside on the tree of remembrance.
We then heard the story of William Coltman, a young man who joined the army in January 1915, aged 26, initially as a rifleman in the North Staffordshire Regiment, but he never fired a shot. He was a Christian, and early on in the war, he made the decision that he wanted to be a ‘peacemaker’. He determined that he should not end lives, but try to save them. And so, instead of fighting, he became a stretcher-bearer. The job of a stretcher-bearer was to rescue the injured men from where they fell, often trudging through the mud in ‘No-Man’s Land’ – through enemy fire from all sides. William was only 5’4” tall, but he didn’t let his size stop him, and he was well-known for carrying the wounded off the battlefield on his back! Most nights, he would venture out into enemy lines to see if any of his regiment were left behind. He did this for three years and was awarded the Victoria Cross for his actions on October 3rd & 4th, 1918. His official letter states that: ‘This very gallant NCO tended the wounded unceasingly for 48hours….He won many other medals too, yet never fired a single bullet.’ William Coltman was one of the few who survived WWI.
To watch parts of our worship and reflections, please play the video below.