The clock ticks gently and inexorably round again and another year passes, with Remembrance Day and Remembrance Sunday drawing in upon us once more. 11a.m on 11 November marks the day when the Western Front fell silent in France in 1918, and Sunday 14 November marks the day for collective acts of remembrance.
A lot has happened to remind me of it personally through the year. Last year, I stood beside the missus’s father on the saluting dais of the Remembrance Day parade in Redcar and felt mighty proud; he had served in the RN in the latter days of WW2. He died earlier this year and, at his funeral, a relative mentioned that a cousin of the family had served as a Flight Engineer on Lancasters and had been killed in WW2, but knew little more about his service.
A little research revealed that he was a Warrant Officer, in his mid-20s, who had been awarded the DFM and had flown 58 operational sorties during 1943 and 1944, on pretty much every one of Bomber Command's main raids, before the Lancaster he was in crashed near Ottignies in Belgium on 20 April 1944, killing him and all of the crew; they are buried next to each other in Belgium. The entries in the operational records for the sorties he flew make for both interesting and very humbling reading. And the crew had been close to finishing their second operational tour and it appears that the mission they flew that night was one for they were not rostered, but volunteered to make up a shortfall in numbers. There is a picture of the crew beside their Lancaster, which a member of their groundcrew had asked each of them to sign, as they were getting into the aircraft that night - there was time for only half of them to sign it, and the words shouted by the skipper out of the cockpit as they were about to start up were that the rest of the crew would sign it when they got back...
We have had the anniversary of the Battle of Britain too, ably marked with the Brethren’s theme at Le Mans this year. And, in the present day, numbers of friends have been involved in the Afghanistan conflict over this year. Looking forwards, my step-son is due to deploy there next year.
Plenty to reflect on, and this year I will be working outside the UK on Remembrance Day and the Sunday, and I intend to find one or two of the Commonwealth War Grave Commission cemeteries out there at appropriate times and remember.
So amidst our hectic lives of today, please spare a moment or two to remember the many men and women of many nations who have been wounded, or have paid the ultimate price during past and present conflicts. The British Legion supports serving and former members of the Armed Forces and their families, and relies heavily on donations from the annual poppy appeal. Once more, I would ask you to support that appeal; please give generously to the Poppy Appeal, either here
http://www.poppy.org.uk/ or in the collecting tins in the shops, or on the High Street, over the coming fortnight. Many thanks,
MG Mark
