We are privileged to share with you the address delivered at this year's Remembrance Service by Chaplain Ed Barker (Hon.).

The reading we just heard from the Gospel of Matthew perfectly illustrates some of what is truly radical about Christianity. The command to love your enemy. As the text says, the natural human reaction is to ‘love your neighbour and hate your enemy’. However, God commands us to do the opposite when it comes to our enemies. This is because our enemies are also men and women created in the image of God, with a soul and a purpose, and hate is not a good emotion to nurture. I think this is an excellent thing to dwell on for Remembrance Day and, as ever, Loretto’s history has provided the perfect illustration of God’s command in the form of Lt Arthur William Swanston (1892).

Normally for Remembrance Day we focus on WWI, and maybe WWII. But this day is supposed to be for us to remember those who have died in all conflicts. The Boer War was fought in the years 1899-1902 in South Africa. The combatants were the forces of the British Empire and descendants of the Dutch settlers called Boers, who we now know as Afrikaans. It was a brutal and bloody war, with much gallantry and many mistakes on both sides. The British Army soon found itself in trouble against the guerrilla tactics of the Boer on his home territory, and so they asked for volunteers to sign up for the duration of the war. My great-grandfather, William Hughes, was one who answered the call. So did hundreds of Old Lorettonians, one of whom was Arthur William Swanston, aged twenty-five. His is a remarkable story, and I must confess a double connection. Not only was Lt Swanston a Lorettonian, he also joined the Inniskilling Dragoons – my regiment. The castle badge that you can see on his photo in your order of service is the same as the one I’m wearing now.

Swanston, like so many Lorettonians, was an outstanding product of Almond’s school. His fellow officer Captain Yardley said this of him: ‘he was a splendid young fellow, who had only recently joined the regiment, and the previous year he has been rowing in the Cambridge Eight. Already he had endeared himself to all… I knew his gallant, daring spirit.’ So far so Lorettonian, but in reading about him one thing really struck me as something he had learned at Loretto. Captain Yardley wrote ‘being Sunday our chaplain held a voluntary evening service in the deserted Dutch church, which I attended with Lt Swanston… Lt Swanston’s fine singing of the evening hymn, ‘Abide with me’ especially struck me.’ This is the hymn we ourselves have just sung.

Sadly, Lt Swanston was killed in action two days after that chapel service on the 16th October 1900, trying to save one of his men that had been wounded as their position was overwhelmed. Captain Yardley saw it all:

‘Trooper Garlick, a short way to the rear, was on the ground, shot through both legs… Garlick’s horse having been shot, Lt Swanston, a fine, powerful young fellow, gallantly lifted him up and placed him on his own horse, but alas, it was a fatal attempt for this horse was shot. Trooper Bisset, who had just mounted unscathed, rushed up and said ‘Here Sir; place him up behind me’… [Swanston pushed the wounded trooper up on Bisset’s horse, and he] galloped off. But a storm of bullets brought them down, the horse shot, Trooper Bisset severely wounded and Trooper Garlick with two more bullets through him. Lt Swanston himself was shot dead… [his death] was a bitter grief to us… Truly he sacrificed his life trying to save another, and died an heroic death.’

This would be a poignant enough story on its own. One of daring escapades and heroic self-sacrifice. Jesus said ‘greater love hath no man than this, to lie down his life for his friends.’ Swanston certainly obeyed that command. But the story is not over.

We should also remember that when a solider dies for his country, they leave people behind. Lt Swanston was buried close to where he fell at a town called Chrissiesmeer. At the end of the South African War, the post office of Chrissiesmeer received a parcel. It was a sprig of blue heather, and a note requesting that it be laid on the grave of Lt Swanston. I should point out that Chrissiesmeer is in the Transvaal, which is in the heart of the former Boer territory, and the majority of the people that live there are Afrikaners – they were the enemy that Swanston was fighting. But despite that, the postmaster laid the heather on his grave. And sure enough, the next year another parcel arrived with the same note, this time containing a sprig of pink heather. The postmaster duly put the heather on the grave. These mysterious parcels continued to arrive on the anniversary of Swanston’s death, one year pink, one year blue. They continued, without any clue as to from whom they came, until 1957, when the parcel arrived with a different note. This one stated that the sender was in ill health and would probably not be sending many more parcels. The note also gave a clue as to who she was: it was Arthur Swanston’s fiancé, the girl he had left behind. She had never married, and she thanked the Chrissiesmeer Post Office for helping her to remember her fiancé. The parcels stopped two years later. Now this story again is remarkable enough; the love that this woman had for her young fiancé meant that she sent heather across the world to his grave for fifty-seven years and never married anyone else. The respect the Boers had for their enemy that they would honour him in such a way. But there is more.

After the Post Office stopped receiving parcels, they continued the tradition of laying flowers on Swanston’s grave on the anniversary of his death. When the Post Office was threatened with closure in the 1990s, the Postmistress handed over the tradition to the children of Chrissiesmeer Primary School. They continue this tradition to this day, going back to the grave each year on the anniversary of Swanston’s death, laying flowers and singing ‘My bonnie lies over the ocean’. There is a photograph of this happening on the table next to Swanston’s picture.

I hope that you have been as moved as I was listening to this story, and I’m grateful to the Headmaster for drawing it to my attention. I feel that Swanston’s tale is the essence of remembrance. Firstly, Swanston, who as a boy would have sat in this Chapel in a red blazer, listening to the chaplain as you are now, was the embodiment of Lorettonian virtues. Character, manners, intelligence, physical fitness, as well as courage and selfless commitment. He embodied Jesus’ maxim that we think about today; that the ultimate sacrifice you can make is to give your life for others. His story also embodies the Latin phrase ‘omnia vincit amor’, or ‘love conquers all’, in that it conquered not only the heart of his fiancé, who held a candle for him for fifty-seven years after his death, but it also conquered the hate of his enemies, whose descendants even today honour his memory. And in doing so, enabled them to embody Christ’s command:

‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.’