REMEMBRANCE Day will be marked across Dorset with a number of services and parades taking place.

Thousands of people are expected to gather in towns and villages to remember the fallen on Remembrance Sunday.

Bournemouth’s Remembrance service will be held by the War Memorial in the Central Gardens on Sunday. The service starts at 10.57am and is followed by a two-minute silence at 11am. The service will last for around 40 minutes and concludes with a wreath laying ceremony.

There will be two formal parades made up of ex-servicemen and women and youth organisations. The Youth Contingent sets off from Exeter Crescent at 10.35am followed by the Adult Contingent. They will march through the town centre to the War Memorial to take up their positions.

In Poole, a service will take place at the War Memorial in Poole Park.

A parade will enter the park before the service, which starts at 10.50am. There will be a field gun salute at the beginning and end of the two minute silence.

Details have been released by the Royal British Legion to allow people in Christchurch to line the parade route and pay their respects.

Participants in the parade will meet at the Royal British Legion premises in Bargates at 9.40am and will march off 10 minutes later, proceeding down Bargates and the High Street.

They will be led by the Band of the Royal British Legion and will pick up the Mayoral party at Saxon Square.

At 10.10am they will arrive at the Priory where wreaths will be laid in the Garden of Remembrance.

Participants will enter the Priory through the west door while members of the public will use the main north door.

The remembrance service will start at 10.50am and there will be a two minute silence at 11am.

Afterwards the parade will return to the Legion premises.

Elsewhere in Dorset, there will be Remembrance parades in Wimborne, Ferndown, West Moors, and Purbeck.

In Verwood, there will be a service at St Michael's Church at 9.45am, a march from the church to Ferrett Green at 10.45am, and a laying of wreaths at the war memorial at 11am.

Blandford’s parade and service begins at 2.45pm in Market Place. Wreaths will be laid before the war memorial at the Corn Exchange, with music from the Blandford Stour Valley Band.

I’ve Welcomed War - by Phoebe Hillier (age 10)

Broken battered trenches,

and lines of wounded sat on benches,

men spluttering and choking as a deadly warning,

will we live to see the morning?

The air is thick with ghastly stenches,

I’ve welcomed war.

The gas just loves to hiss and groan,

while we’re spluttering that we’re missing home,

the world is turning red and reeking,

and the shrapnel shells are shrieking,

who knows if your blood is slowly leaking?

I’ve welcomed war.

I could hear the growling crescendo of the big guns,

and the thought of mournful mothers losing their sons,

the heat rains down on us like the breath of hell,

the mud and salt, oh that gruesome smell,

I’ve welcomed war.

I have no life left inside me,

I’m useless can’t you see?

I’ve lived for years fighting and fighting,

and seen too many dreadful sightings,

for I have got to now pass on,

the rein, the fight as I am gone,

the poppies grow where I now lay,

and must I say, the foe will pay,

we lay in the ground,

only rarely noticed, I’m gone,

you’ve ruined me war.