WE do not know who did this or why; young or old, vandalism or protest, but a Silent Soldier fell on Monday morning, not in the horror and mud of Flanders but on a green and leafy street in Ferndown.

He stood, not to glorify that long ago war but as silent testimony to the resolve of all civilised people to remember the sacrifice of a generation and the hope that still, one hundred years on, we will never let such a thing happen again.

You may knock down a Silent Soldier but you do not take away that remembrance or that resolve.

GRANT PARROTT

Chairman, The Royal British Legion, Ferndown Branch