Veterans and Service Personnel — House of Commons, 2016-11-08
Topic: Public Lands
Kevin John Foster (Conservative, Centre-right): It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who shared many wise words with us. His comments on the sacrifice made by the men of Ulster back in 1916 on the first day of the Somme were particularly poignant. Earlier this year, I was pleased to visit Belfast City Hall and see the original of the famous painting commemorating those who went over the top. Those men had all volunteered of course; everyone at the Somme was a volunteer—nobody had been conscripted into the forces at that point. We will all of course be reflecting on the impact of their sacrifice on politics immediately following the war and for many years after. There are memorials across Belfast to the many hundreds who did not return, and they prompted me to reflect on the impact that would have had on communities, with so many young men signing up, going away as groups of friends, and then never coming back. That, for me, is the most poignant aspect of all this I congratulate the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) on securing this debate. It was a pleasure to hear his application at the Backbench Business Committee and I am glad we have been able to find such an opportune time for this debate, as we are in the centenary period, we are about to commemorate the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, and in two years we will be marking the actual centenary of that moment. This year’s event will follow the centenaries of the Somme and the Battle of Jutland. One of the things brought home to me by attending the 100th anniversary marking both those battles held at Paignton war memorial was how close together they were. I think of the families having just finished receiving the telegrams to let them know who had died at the Battle of Jutland—with a particular impact in south Devon, given its naval tradition—only then a few weeks later to start getting the first notifications of those who had been killed in the Battle of the Somme. Sometimes it is difficult to comprehend just how close together these events were—the bloodiest day for the Royal Navy and the bloodiest day for the British Army, just a few months apart—and the impact that must have had That helped inspire the idea of wanting to remember these events as more than just a series of battles and episodes in military history, but also as involving individuals. That is why we have the process of remembrance, which has now started and which, for me, very much originates from those communities. I looked at the newspapers at the time, including some local papers, which at the start of the war had thought it would be good to commemorate those who had given their lives for their country and to put them on their front page. Some newspapers in the summer of 1916 were just a tablet of names, which made me think of the impact all this must have had It is easy to think about these events as acts of historical memory—of black-and-white films of battles from the first and second world wars—but it is right that we focus on veterans. Many in Torbay proudly wear their veterans badge. To be fair, it was the last Labour Government who brought that in, and many take huge pride in being able to go around on a day-to-day basis and say they have served their country in that way One of the most interesting people I met in my first steps into politics was a veteran called "Johnny" Johnson and his wife. He was a former chairman of Torbay Conservative Association and former Torbay councillor, but most famously of all the last surviving British Dambuster. He was such an unassuming man and a true hero in every sense; he would never want to dwell on what he did, but was only too happy to do so. I first met him when I was doing a project for my A-level history course. I talked to him about the raid and got the sense of not just the sacrifice he made, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mrs Trevelyan) commented on, the impact on the family. His wife was in the women’s air force at the time and they had no knowledge of what their husbands were doing. One of Johnny’s comrades had been disciplined for ringing his girlfriend up to say, "I won’t be able to make it tonight." He asked in his defence, "What should I have done? We had arranged to meet at the cinema; she would have stood there for an hour." The response was, "You should have let her stand there for an hour and the next time you saw her said, ‘There’s a war on’ and left it at that."