Thirteen years ago, with the death - at the age of 110 - of the last veteran of the First World War a chapter in our nation’s history ended. Claude Choules left school, at the age of 14, to enlist at the outbreak of the Great War. Though rejected by the army due to his age, Claude helped out on a training ship until he was old enough to serve in the Royal Navy. That remarkable story of patriotic courage is just one of numerous reminders of the debt we owe to those who sacrificed so much for us.
As I stood at Spalding’s War Memorial on Remembrance Sunday, and again at a similar ceremony at Springfields the following Armistice Day morning, I reflected that in a few short years none will remain of the multitude of brave Britons who fought for freedom against Nazi Germany, and their axis allies Japan, in the Second World War.
The youngest British servicemen from that war are now in their 90s, with just 70,000 or so remaining nationwide. Having taken part, as the local MP, in Remembrance Day commemorations for almost three decades, I recall in my early years marching alongside many Second World War veterans. Yet, as in a decade or so none anywhere will grace Remembrance Sunday, the duty to remember will fall to those of us born later.
For even when the last of our older veterans have passed away our country must continue to come together, as we do in Spalding, Holbeach, Pinchbeck, Donington, Sutton Bridge, Long Sutton, Gosberton, Crowland, the Deepings and elsewhere each year, to gather at war memorials to mark the sacrifices our forebears made for our country in the two world wars, and just as significantly in conflicts since. Through the work of the Royal British Legion, the meaning of wearing a red poppy is passed from one generation to the next – offering both remembrance of those lost in conflict, and hope for a peaceful future.
Remembrance Sunday reminds us, too, of the vital work done by volunteers who prepare for the annual event - from the Busy Bees volunteer group to Peterborough’s Highland Pipe Band, from local branches of the Royal British Legion to the Rotary Club of South Holland, and countless others too. So many people give up their time each and every year to keep this vital national tradition alive, notable amongst them are the army and air cadets, who stood proudly at South Holland’s silence. After, I took time to speak at length to some of these young people, for they are the future of remembrance.
As each year I plant a cross in Parliament’s Garden of Remembrance, in the shadow of Big Ben, to commemorate all those from my constituency who gave their lives defending our Crown and country, poet Laurence Binyon’s timeless words fill my thoughts: “They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old. Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, We will remember them."
