Page 19 - QARANC Vol 17 No 1 2019

Last year Corporal Sarah O’Connor, a fellow member of 208 (Liverpool) Field Hospital and I were nominated by our O/C Nursing, Colonel Helen Ball, to attend the Royal British Legion annual Festival of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall. We both jumped at the chance to represent our unit at such a prestigious event.
We were both kindly given time off from work to attend and drove a solid five hours to London on 8 November 2018. After we arrived, we were shown to our accommodation and discussed timings for the following morning. We then proceeded to get some well-needed rest before the events of the following day. The next day we were transferred by coach to Wellington Barracks, which overlooked the historic and beautiful Buckingham Palace.
Friday consisted of a full-day dress rehearsal, which included copious amounts of drill and repeatedly marching up and down the stairs at Wellington Barracks, a uniform inspection and of course, some very good food!
Both Corporal O’Connor and I were introduced to the event by Colonel Guy Stone, who funnily enough, was the same officer who passed me out on my Bravo course at Grantham back in 2016. We rehearsed with contingents from the Guards Division, RAVC, QARANC and the Ghurkhas, the Royal Navy, the Royal Air Force and of course super talented Reservists!
We didn’t just rehearse on Friday; we were transferred to the Royal Albert Hall, where we were allowed to watch other acts perform, such as Sir Tom Jones, McFly and Sheridan
208 (Liverpool) Field Hospital: Corporal Jessica Hindley and Corporal Sarah O’Connor at the Festival of Remembrance
Smith. Although this was fun, we were also reminded of the harrowing events of WW1 and more recently Afghanistan, and tears were shed equally amongst us.
Then the big day dawned and we were up and polishing our shoes at the crack of dawn. Saturday started with a
THE GAZETTE QARANC 17
208 (Liverpool) Field Hospital
A Night to Remember, the Royal British Legion Festival of Remembrance
We remember...
Reflections on Remembrance 2018
It’s my personal perception that over the last few years, remembrance has become more ingrained in public consciousness than ever before. Clearly this has a lot to do with the commemorations marking important events in WW1, and the upsurge of interest in family history, where many people are discovering for the first time what their ancestors did in WW1 and WW2 and other conflicts in the 20th century. As a nation we constantly search for meaning in our history and the sight of the Queen leading the nation’s mourning, Remembrance events, poppies on sale, and TV programmes, coupled with the erection of new memorials, helps us to remember actively the people and events of the past that have had a place in shaping our current world order and that of the future.
As women, the loss of members of our own sex has been small in
comparison to that of men, but women made sacrifices in many other ways that can still be construed as loss. Older Association members may recall their mothers and grandmothers talking about their own war service, not only in the Armed Forces of the Crown, but as factory workers, farm workers, munitions workers, miners, transport workers and a myriad of other volunteer organisations. My grandmother worked in the Silvertown Munitions Factory in WW1 and was blinded for life in the huge munitions’ explosion in 1917. My mother was called-up in WW2 for service with the ATS, operating the Predictor in a searchlight platoon for a Royal Artillery anti-aircraft battery in London – a job fraught with risk and danger.
The loss to women, as with men, was the mortgaging of their youth to sustain the war effort, and in addition they had to support their family members on return
from the fighting, many of whom had been away for years, experiencing for example, desperate privations as prisoners of war, which I’m sure was not the ‘gung-ho’ experience depicted in cinema films. More recently the growth of charities such as the Military Wives Choirs Foundation has sharply illustrated how women’s lives are directly and deeply affected by conflict experiences. It’s not so long since the War Widows Association was formed and won its fight for special recognition of the War Widows Pension in UK tax law; so, it was especially moving to see the photograph of Margaret Britton lay a wreath for the War Widows Association.
The many interesting and illuminating stories you will read in this section can only serve to remind you of the reasons that ‘we will remember them’.
Alison Spires Editor