11th November 2016
I was at the cenotaph on Friday to pay my respects to those who went before. My interest in military history began withe the First World War and so as I stood with my head bowed I silently recounted the names of those men whom I wished to thank and remember. It begins with my family:
Walter Nixon
Jack Nixon
Sid Nixon
Edgar Nixon
Alf Nixon
Bert Elam
Charles Arthur Roberts
I then recalled the men I had interviewed, mostly between 1980 and 1985 when I was a young man at school and later at university, and the men I was interviewing were in their eighties, nineties and, in a couple of cases, hundreds. I remembered pleasant times with:
Frederick Cutts
Reg Crane
These were all men who I met on multiple occasions and, dare I say, became friends with, although to me they were always Mr Bardsley, Mr Brown, Mr Cutts; never Harry, Stan or Fred.
I am honoured to have had ancestors who fought for Britain in the First World War, honoured too to have met and chatted with men - well over a hundred of them in the end - who shouldered arms for King and Country during those terrible years 1914-1918. Today, on this Remembrance Sunday, I remember them all.
