Remembrance Sunday
We spent the Sunday morning in Brecon, and watched the parade of soldiers from the local barracks through the town to the War Memorial, and then followed the parade up the hill to the beautiful Brecon Cathedral for the Remembrance Day ceremony.
Brecon is home to The Royal Regiment of Wales and a company from the Ghurkha rifles, and the Beacons play a major role in the training of armed services, with the SAS stationed in nearby Sennybridge and the area used extensively for training exercises.
As we drove down to Wales last week we saw a plane heading into RAF Lyneham in Wiltshire, which is where the bodies of soldiers killed in this conflict are repatriated to the UK (see my blog in July 2009 for details of the process of remembrance conducted in Wootton Bassett for these troops). It was clear listening to the conversations in the crowd that a number of people there currently had loved ones stationed over in Afghanistan (where the allied death toll continues to rise at a frightening rate, with 8 soldiers killed there last week alone). I cnanot imagine what it would like having someone I loved away fighting in such a war, and my heart went out to these people as they chatted about their partners.
I looked around but could not see anyone wearing Second World War medals like my dads and realised that many of his generation are no longer alive. This year is the first in the UK where there are no living WWI veterans, but in fact it will not be too much longer before veterans of WWII disappear with the youngest of them being in their 80s already.
After 14 years in NZ (where Remembrance Sunday takes a back seat to ANZAC Day) it was lovely to be back in the UK for this sombre, poignant, but oh so important event.
