The Youth of Guildford Plays a Leading Role in Guildford’s Remembrance Service

Published on: 13 Nov, 2022
Updated on: 14 Nov, 2022

The Surrey Army Cadet Force (ACF) Corps of Drums part of 3rd Battalion, Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment

By Martin Giles

Youth was to the fore at today’s Remembrance service in the Castle Grounds in Guildford.

Earlier in the week, the GBC council leader Julia McShane said: “It is so important that we pass on the tradition of Remembrance to the younger generation,” and represented by cadets from various local units they made up a large part of those on parade.

Cadet Freddie Coombes told The Dragon why he thought Remembrance was important…

Bugler sounding Last Post

But the ceremony, led by the Rector of Holy Trinity, Canon Robert Cotton, followed traditional lines.

After prayers and the verse from Lawrence Binyon’s poem For the Fallen:

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

A bugler sounded Lasy Post which commenced the two-minute silence, ended by Reveille and the Kohima epitaph: When you go home tell them of us and say, for your tomorrow we gave our today.

This was followed by the poppy wreath laying at the two war memorials.

Music was provided by the Guildford High School Brass Ensemble and the Vivace Chorus.

Seen in the video below are: the Mayor of Guildford Dennis Booth, Col (Retd) Patrick Crowley MBE DL, the Deputy Mayor Masuk Miah, Brig (Retd) Fiona Gardner CBE, Guildford’s MP Angela Richardson and the Chief Executive of GBC Tom Horwood and two service veterans…

Two veterans at the parade spoke of the active service in Malaya in which they had played a part…

As usual, other services were held in villages throughout the borough.

Here Jan Lofthouse reports from the ceremony at Ockham: At the 11th hour on Remembrance Sunday a two-minute silence was observed at the war memorial in Ockham attended by 100 locals together with their friends and dogs.

The outdoor service was taken by Reverend Elisabeth Burke at the newly landscaped memorial with readings from Ime and Imogen Jamieson who recited the roll of honour, 22 men from Ockham who fell in the two world wars.

Poppy wreaths were laid by Ockham Parish Council, Ockham and Hatchford Residents Association All Saints Church Ockham, the Parochial Church Council, Surrey Police, Ockham & Ripley branches of the Women’s Institute and a wreath handmade by children from St Matthews School, Downside.

Tom from the Royal Grammar School in Guildford blew Last Post and Reveille beautifully as in many previous years. The church choir sang hymns and the National Anthem.

Reader Sheila Atkinson has sent us these pictures from Holy Trinity Church to the march to the Castle Grounds.

And Daniella West took these photographs of the two war memorials in the Castle Grounds.

If you have a photo, complete with caption, of your village’s service that you wish to be added here please send to: guildford.dragon@gmail.com.

Town Centre Service on Armistice Day

The 2022 Armistice Day service in Guildford High Street. Picture: Guildford Borough Council.

People gathered in Guildford High Street on Friday morning (November 11), for the borough’s Armistice Day service and the two-minute silence.

The Mayor’s Chaplain, The Revd David Peters, welcomed those gathered.

The service was conducted from the balcony of the Guildhall. Picture: Guildford Borough Council.

The Exhortation was read by Ian Chatfield, 5th Queen’s Royal Regiment OMA, and bugler Richard Straker from the Friary Brass Band sounded Last Post.

A cadet from the Combined Cadet Force at the Royal Grammar School read the Kohima Epitaph.

Worplesdon remembers on Armistice Day

Also on Armistice Day, Worplesdon Parish Council held two simultaneous services of remembrance, both in Jacobs Well.

Members of Worplesdon Parish Council and Jacobs Well residents who attended the service of remembrance at Harry’s Meadow.

The main service was at the memorial bench in Harry’s Meadow near the village hall, with the second at the Lilly Bell II memorial at the junction of Clay Lane and Queenhythe Road.

Worplesdon Parish Council’s assistant clerk, Victoria Fear, lays a wreath at the Lilly Bell II memorial.

Remembering the four men of the US Army Air Air Force who are commemorated on the Lilly Bell II memorial.

In addition, members of the parish council also laid wreaths at St Alban’s Church in Wood Street Village, St Mary’s Church at Perry Hill, and at the memorial on the 14th green at Worplesdon Golf Club that commemorates the four airmen of the six-man crew who lost their lives when their RAF Halifax bomber crashed at the spot on March 10, 1941, after being brought down by ‘friendly’ fire.

The Lilly Bell II memorial.

The Lilly Bell II memorial in Jacobs Well commemorates the four airmen of the US Army Air Force who died when their cargo aircraft crashed in the field bordered by Clay Lane on October 25, 1944.

Local historian and writer David Rose attended the wreath laying there, and afterwards gave an impromptu short talk to those gather about the cause of crash, the airmen who died, and how the memorial came to be placed there, which was unveiled in 2010.

Click here for the full story of the aircraft nicknamed Lilly Bell II and its crew.

And here for an additional story.

And at Artington