Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott.
Well it's another blowy day here on Dartmoor,
Easterly wind,
I'm hunkering beside a devon wall,
A beautiful stone wall clad in moss,
There are sheep in the field beside me,
There's a cuckoo in the woodland below me and I've been watching the lambs playing in the field.
It's very beautiful to see early evening and it's a sort of grey,
I say early evening,
It's probably late evening is better description,
The light is going but it's obviously still light,
We're at that time of year now where the evenings are really drawing out beautifully.
I've just passed a herd of Dartmoor ponies,
There was about 20 of them grazing,
I felt quite moved as I walked past them,
Such magnificent animals and I was able to walk very close to them and they were unperturbed as they were grazing,
It was quite magical actually.
And I'm quite reflective actually,
Today I've been out at a church service,
It's a service that was put on by my friend,
He organised it and it was to commemorate the death of the uncle he never knew and some of his colleagues.
The uncle died before my friend was born and this young man,
As he was at the time,
Died in the Second World War and he wasn't fighting on the front line,
He died as a firefighter and it was him and five of his crew members of the fire service from Saltash,
Which is a small town in Cornwall,
That were called out to support the Blitz in Plymouth,
Which is the city of Plymouth and Devon and so these firefighters from the neighbouring county went to Plymouth to try and put out some of the fires that were raging across the city following the Blitz and they sadly all lost their lives when they drove over an unexploded bomb and they were just all killed instantly.
And I can just imagine for the community of Saltash,
This must have been devastating to lose six young men so tragically,
Traumatically and quickly.
And today the service was a commemoration of their lives,
A remembering of their lives.
There had been some work in the graveyard to put down some graves for those that only had wooden crosses marking where they'd been laid to rest.
The notice board and information board had gone up in the churchyard as well to explain about these six men who had given their lives to try and save others and there was the Lord Mayor of Plymouth and Mayor of Saltash,
There were representatives from the RAF and the fire service and the bishop was there and it was a very well attended church service,
A very respectful church service to commemorate the lives of these men that were killed 85 years ago.
And it really had me reflect as I've been walking this evening on the loss of life of those people that are inadvertently caught in the crossfire of war and that die.
Often it's the families or the civilians and the communities that suffer desperately as war is being raged all around them and sometimes we don't remember those people so it felt very fitting to remember these firefighters,
These young men who had given their lives to help others.
And so today is really a reflection on my sense of gratitude of people that have gone before,
People that have given their life so that I might have a a more easeful life and these young men they really were one of those people that have enabled me to have a life like I live now.
So today is a reflection on that and as I sat in the church and I looked around the church it's an old church and there are different memorials on the wall you can see dating back hundreds of years to people that died before and then in the churchyard itself lots of gravestones,
Hundreds of gravestones representing people that have died over the previous hundreds of years.
I just realised the importance of ancestors,
The importance of story and the importance of remembering you know sometimes I wonder what we have learned and I think it's really important to remember those that have gone before,
The stories and the lives that they lived and to give thanks,
To give thanks for them,
People we will never know but whose memory lives on.
Today is just a reflection on that.
Thank you for joining me today and don't forget to join me again tomorrow for another Five Minutes in Nature.
