Service of Remembrance 2025

This year's Service of Remembrance, held on Wednesday 5 November in a Chapel filled with senior pupils, staff and OBs, was especially poignant in the year when we commemorate the end of the Second World War. 

In a movingly respectful service led by the Rev. Rich Wootten, the choir sang John Ireland's powerful 'Greater love hath no man' before the Head gave his address. On a wet and squally Brecon day, prayers were led by Heads of Houses and wreaths were laid at the altar by the Head, the Bursar, Huw Richards (OBA) and Robin Francis (CCF). 

In his sermon, the Head higlighted the experience of RDW Harley, an OB whose name is not on the War Memorial tablet but who was added to the Roll of Honour in 2022. The Head's words are reproduced with his kind permission.

Sermon: The Head, Gareth Pearson

When you go home, tell them of us and say, For your tomorrow, we gave our today.

You will hear these hauntingly powerful words at the end of today’s service, spoken by our sacristan Katie. For me, they capture exactly why Remembrance Day matters, and should always matter.

For 364 days a year we all focus on our development, our enjoyment of life, our career, our time with loved ones. Everything that constitutes our life, our precious, complicated and rich life. It therefore must be right that one day a year we stop and reflect upon the millions of people who sacrificed their life in order that we may live free.

The saying is so simple, so humble. Those lost souls don’t ask for much. They ask, “tell them of us’’. This simple epitaph reminds us that those that gave their life ask only to be remembered, nothing more. That is what we did today by reading out aloud their full names: deliberately, respectfully and with gratitude.

The list of names of the pupils of Christ College who died in war is tragically long. Just hearing the names is in itself incredibly moving. But we must remember that behind every name is a life lived and lost.

You may not have noticed but over half-term the names of the fallen in World War Two were re-coloured as we noticed that their names had worn off over the years. This made me think, how many others are there whose life was either taken or destroyed by war whose name is not listed?

There will be millions, no doubt who sacrificed just as much but didn’t quite make the criteria at the time to have their name carved on a Remembrance board.

This year, I would like to honour all those unlisted, those who don’t appear on any war memorial. I will do this by sharing the story of Richard Darwin Wade Harley.

Richard Harley joined Christ College at the age of 13 in 1930 from his home in Oxford. He joined School House where his brother, John Harley, had already been a boarder for a year. He doesn't seem to have been at the forefront of any sport or activity while at school but he was popular and known to be a "bright, debonair, irresponsible youngster, who seemed to radiate happiness and good fellowship on all occasions". To me, he sounds a lot like many of you. He certainly sounds like a fun guy to be around.

In July 1933, at the age of 16 he left school to join his father and brother in the banking profession. In October 1939, a month after war was declared, he volunteered into the army. He became a gunner in the Royal Artillery and early in 1940 he was sent to France with the British Expeditionary Force, which was deployed alongside the allied troops in France and Belgium.

On 10 May 1940, Germany invaded France and pushed back the British Expeditionary Force to the French port of Dunkirk. Soon 340,000 troops were crowded onto the beaches waiting for evacuation home by the Royal Navy’s ‘Operation Dynamo'.

More than 300,000 men were evacuated in the operation that is so familiar to us, but Gunner Harley was not one of them. He was wounded and he became one of more than 40,000 British soldiers who didn’t make it out of France that day.

In the book ‘Dunkirk: the Men They Left Behind’, historian Sean Longden writes,

“These dreadful days were never forgotten by those who endured them. They had fought the battles to ensure the successful evacuation of over 300,000 fellow soldiers. Their sacrifice had brought the salvation of the British nation. Yet they had been forgotten while those who escaped and made their way back home were hailed as heroes.”

Instead of being hailed as a hero, Wade Harley was captured and became a Prisoner of War. After a forced march of hundreds of miles through Belgium to Holland, he was herded into a waiting cattle truck. With little food and water, he travelled in one of the cramped, stifling carriages that took the PoWs through Germany to Stalag 8b in Poland, the camp where he remained for the remainder of the war.

Gunner Harley became Prisoner 10655. Like many thousands of Prisoners of War, he experienced the brutalising experiences of being held captive. He was forced to work in a coalmine, where he endured hard physical labour on a poor diet and he contracted tuberculosis. For nearly five years he survived unimaginably horrific conditions.

When the Russian army advanced in January 1945, the PoWs in Stalag 8b were evacuated by their German captors in an attempt to delay the prisoners’ liberation. Already ill and exhausted by their experience of captivity, the PoWs were forced to march hundreds of miles in deep snow and biting wind with bare rations and inadequate clothing.

When Wade was finally repatriated, he was immediately discharged from the Army on account of his ruined health. No hero’s welcome for Wade. He was however able to return to work as a bank clerk. He made gallant efforts to maintain a normal life, despite his physical and mental scars, but his ill health continued.

At the age of 30 he died in March 1948 as a result of pulmonary tuberculosis known to have been contracted whilst a PoW.

‘RDW Harley’ does not appear on the World War Two Memorial tablet. Today we honour Gunner Wade Harley, and all like him, for the sacrifice he made.

His story is another reminder that war doesn’t end with an Armistice. In the year in which we commemorate the end of the Second World War, Wade Harley represents the many Old Breconians who may have returned home but their lives were also taken by their experience of war, just like the brave who are named.

Final Thought

When you watch the news about conflicts around the world - whilst it is right that you question the politics, the morality, the history surrounding that conflict, please always spare a thought for the thousands and thousands of individuals who chose to run towards the danger rather than move to safety. They did so because they saw a job needed to be done, not for their benefit but for the needs of others.

For the doctors and nurses who chose to stay behind to care for those in Gaza

The soldiers who are fighting on the front line in Ukraine.

 For all the armed and emergency service workers who put their lives on the line to serve their people.

For the brave train guard Samir Zitouni who saved the lives of his passengers.

To ALL those who made the deliberate and conscious choice to risk their today so that others would have their tomorrow.

Amen