At your service... (From Bournemouth Echo)

At your service...

7:00am Wednesday 5th November 2008

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IT is said not one family in Britain was unaffected by the First World War, which ended 90 years ago.

Conscription ensured if you were not married to a soldier you were the son or daughter of one, or they were your cousin or your sibling.

Twenty years after that, the Second World War ensured the horrors of conflict were visited upon another generation. Since then we have had Aden, Korea, the Falklands, Afghanistan and Iraq.

However, the contraction in numbers of serving personnel – in 1945 there was an estimated 2,920,000 serving men, in 2008 the army consists of 132,000 soldiers – means that fewer people personally know serving men and women. Some believe this may have lead to less understanding.

Certainly it is something that Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Richard Dannatt, has been concerned about. Last month he said: “It’s the things which cost nothing that are the most important – a friendly greeting in the street, a prayer in church.”

But how do we show this?

In June Burton near Christchurch showed the way. It held its own parade to show support for the troops. It was the brainchild of former Sgt Major Colin Jamieson.

“It started more than a year ago,” he says. “I was sitting on the parish council and felt we ought to do something to show people are not forgotten.”

With 30 years’ military experience, he can state with conviction: “It can be very lonely a long way from home. In Iraq soldiers probably don’t want to be there, the Iraqis probably don’t want us there but the troops are there and we need to let them know we’re on their side.”

So he started organising the parade, as a supportive celebration not commemoration.

“We had about 600 people turn out. It was people from the community of Burton but it was for anyone to participate and we had people from Christchurch and Highcliffe and the Royal British Legion band.

“The Deputy Lord Lieutenant and the mayor came along so everyone was very well represented.”

They urged villagers to put up bunting. “If they didn’t have any, we gave them some and on the day the whole route was lined with flag-waving people and union flag hats. It just captured the mood, even though it took more than a year to plan.”

Why him? Why Burton? “Well, we do have people from Burton who’re serving, so that was relevant, but we should never forget what they’re doing on our behalf. We should never forget that, because they do it willingly and professionally and we should never forget the young people, who so often get slated for things that other people have done. They all get tarred with the same brush but some of them are out there performing heroically.”

He believes the parade happened because even if they don’t agree with the wars, people still care about the troops.

“It was different to the Armistice, it was celebrating how good our guys are now.

“I was talking to people in the pub the other day and they all said what a brilliant event it was because we brought the community together, we were showing our gratitude and that we were thinking of the soldiers.”

Finding new ways to remember the fallen, and continuing to get the money in to support those who still need help is the challenge of the Royal British Legion. As the war generation slips away, new generations will be challenged to find new ways of honouring them. The evidence is they are rising to it.

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