FOR YOUR TOMORROW

Redlynch Village Hall

NIMROD gets me every time.

The opening strains of Elgar’s elegy, so closely asociated with Remembrance Sunday, brings a lump to the throat.

And that was just the start of the evening.

By the time we reached its encore at the end of Redlynch Players’ For Your Tomorrow, with its heart-bursting crescendo accompanied by poppies dropping gently to the floor around us, I was having trouble holding back the tears.

And the floodgates opened with the final image of a poppy laid gently by a little girl atop a tin helmet left centrestage amid the fallen petals.

On paper, this respectful, carefully thought out tribute, compiled by Lloyd and Ron Perry, to the men of Redlynch parish, who lost their lives on the battlefields of Flanders, should not have had that impact.

Poems, songs, letters and dramatic excerpts were interwoven with national and local history by a cast of eight, clad simply in black, performing on a bare stage backed by a screen onto which was projected photographs, old clips from Pathe news and even the words of the songs so we could all join in.

But something happened in the playing that was very powerful and very moving.

Perhaps it was Sarah Newman’s affecting playing of Carrie Kipling hearing the news that her son had gone missing after the Battle of Loos or Ewan Tanner as a young Tommy writing home to his mother from the front line before she too received the news every mother dreads.

So many didn’t come back.

We learned about the Hiscocks boys from Bound Cottage on the Hampshire/Wiltshire border just down the road, who all joined up.

We listened as little Amelia Goddard from Morgan’s Vale and Woodfalls Academy read out the special poem she had written as part of the school’s project work on the Great War and to the cast as they listed all the names on the three war memorials within the parish boundaries.

For Your Tomorrow will stay in the memory for a long time – and the poppy seeds included in the programme will ensure that we will be reminded in the years to come.

Lesley Bates