Veterans from a military regiment will reflect on their service with fellow soldiers at Remembrance Day services this weekend.
The Honourable Artillery Company (HAC), on City Road, hosts a reserve army of 400 men and women who balance their daytime jobs with army training in the evenings. It is the oldest regiment of the British army. Sergeant Lenore Dudman, a marketing manager, has served with the regiment since 2004.
She was deployed to Afghanistan twice, alongside 300 other soldiers from the HAC. “Personally, remembrance is really important. I knew one person well who was killed in Afghanistan. It is an opportunity to reflect on that.
“Originally, remembrance was about the two world wars but the army also supports younger veterans. When you go on tours, it is a brave thing to do. Remembrance is a chance to think about that bravery. It’s also a chance to see my army friends and to remember what we’ve done.”
Sean Crane, chief executive of the HAC, served with the army for 30 years and was a commander of the Gurkha battalion.He said: “Remembrance is both a very personal and a very public thing. All the freedoms we enjoy may not exist if those people had not gone off to fight in wars.
“During the service, we read out the Kohima prayer. In Kohima, in northern India, there is a plaque that says: ‘when you go home, tell them of us and say – for your tomorrow, we gave our today’.”
The HAC lost 1,300 soldiers in the First World War and 750 in the Second World War. In the last ten years, two soldiers from the regiment have been killed in Afghanistan. It will hold one remembrance service at St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate Church tomorrow and another at Spa Fields on Sunday.
