They Shall Grow Not Old

Article about a 2004 performance from The Cambridge Post, April 24, 2004, p. 4. Reproduced with permission. The article is accessible from: http://www.postnewspapers.com.au/20040424/2004-04-24.pdf

This is the complete article:

Anzac airing for flyer Bert’s song

A choral evensong at 5pm is how St Edmund’s Anglican Church in Wembley will mark Anzac Day.

The choir will sing the moving anthem, In Memorium, which has strong local links, according to the church’s newsletter.

The anthem was sung for the first time at St Barnabas’s Church in West Leederville at a memorial service for Bert Daymond, a young airman killed over Germany during World War II.

Bert had been a member of the St Barnabas choir before the war and the music for In Memorium was composed by his choirmaster H.N. (Harry) Summer and his son, Ted.

According to Sheila Andrew and Connie Robinson, who were in the choir at the time, the bugle parts were performed by an air force trumpeter and it was very moving.

Sheila has also investigated the origins of The Ode that’s always recited on Anzac Day: “They shall [grow not] old as we that are left grow old …”

The Ode is the fourth verse of a poem called For the Fallen, by English poet Laurence Binyon. The seven-verse poem was first published in The Times in September 1914 and honoured those who had died in World War I.