Remembrance

There are many war memorials across Devon — many in small villages where the number of those who fell in the First World War would have represented a significant proportion of the local community and almost all of them young men.

This was truly a conflict of unimaginable slaughter – one that destroyed a generation.

The date of Remembrance Sunday (November 13 this year) reflects that conflict. It is set as the Sunday closest to November 11, the date of the armistice that marked the end of the First World War.

The wreaths are of poppies, recalling the fields of those bright and hopeful flowers that grew over many of the war-strewn wastes of what had once been the Western Front.

In Okehampton, as elsewhere, a bugle will sound the Last Post, which in military life represents the end of the day or the final farewell. There will then follow the two minutes' silence before the sounding of the Reveille (the Rouse) followed by the recitation of the Ode of Remembrance.

Many of these ceremonies, including that at the Cenotaph, will be organised by the Royal British Legion. They are the custodians of Remembrance and organise the annual Poppy Day appeal.

They do much else besides. They and their 380,000 members provide welfare services for both serving and ex-service personnel and help around 100,000 people a year spending over £1-million a week on welfare services alone.

It is they who negotiate with such dignity the issues of the memory of the past and the needs of the present — in recognition of the service of the millions of our fellow countrymen and women who have served our country from the Great War through to the present day. We owe them all a great deal.