Remembrance Sunday

Last Sunday I attended the Remembrance Day march from the cenotaph on Wigan Road to St Thomas church for the service.

Every year when I attend Remembrance Sunday I always consider myself to be very fortunate because I never had to fight in a war. Certainly during my lifetime there have been wars but conscription had been abolished by the time that I was old enough to fight and I was never the military type in my youth

Compare my non experience of war with my father in law - pictured in this blog.
In 1939 he was in the Territorial Army and was called up into the regular army. He was evacuated from Dunkirk and then was shipped off to the Far East where he was captured by the Japanese in Singapore(some people have all the luck.) He spent three and a half years working under the Japanese including on the Burma railway. Remarkably he survived,returned to Blackpool,got a job as a bus driver and brought up three children. Of course many of his friends did not survive.

As I get older I realise more and more how important is to have Remembrance Sunday and to pay our respects to the many brave men like my father in law and the millions of others who did not survive fighting for our country.