FLAMES FOR FALLEN
D-Day veteran, 97, among those at ceremony as William lays wreath in memory of submariners’ sacrifice
Beefeaters light the first of thousands of flames in a ceremony in the dry moat of the Tower of London as part of an installation called Beyond the Deepening Shadow: The Tower Remembers, to mark the centenary of the end of First World War.
SINCE THE beginning of the last century, more than 170 Royal Navy submarines have been lost at sea – some in circumstances never fully explained.
A roll call of lost submarines was read yesterday as veterans joined Royalty to remember fallen shipmates.
The Duke of Cambridge, who is the Commodore-in-Chief of the Submarine Service – which formed in 1901 and is known as the Silent Service – paid tribute to those who died at a wreathlaying ceremony in central London a week before the centenary of Armistice.
Among those present at the ceremony in Middle Temple was Jim Booth, a 97-year-old D-Day veteran who survived an attack at his home last year. Mr Booth is the last survivor of a daring 10-man team who spent five days underwater in two mini-subs, X-20 and X-23, before the D-Day invasion of 1944.
Chaplain to the Submariners Association the Rev Paul Jupp, who led the ceremony, said people should make a “real effort” to keep the stories of the submariners’ sacrifice alive.
He said: “History and remembrance are merged by the coming together of us old shipmates and those who are actually doing the job now – a job that we were so proud to be part of in days gone by.
“A few of us will remember the submarines that were lost and a few of us will remember people who served on them. May all of us make a real effort to learn the story of their service and to carry them on into the future.”
The Duke met with submariners in Middle Temple Hall after the ceremony. The Royal Mariners Band played the national anthem and hymns during the memorial ceremony and the submariners drank a toast to “absent friends” from hip flasks.
Gillian Molyneux, whose husband was killed on board HMS Astute in Southampton in 2011, laid a wreath on behalf of the submariners’ widows. The ceremony this year had added poignancy because of it being 100 years since the end of the First World War, she said.
“I think remembrance is not just about remembering those who lost their lives, but also remembering those who are still serving,” she added. “It is definitely a time to say thank you.”
The annual ceremony, which is held every year a week before Remembrance Sunday, was first held in 1923 after the National Submarine Memorial was unveiled on the nearby Victoria Embankment in 1922.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Theresa May will join Emmanuel Macron for a ceremony on the Somme on Friday, where more than 19,000 British troops died on the first day of the battle on July 1, 1916. They will have a working lunch in Albert before laying a wreath at the imposing Thiepval Memorial, which is inscribed with the names of 72,000 war dead who have no known graves.
Mrs May will also lay wreaths in a military cemetery in Mons on the graves of John Parr, the first British soldier to be killed in 1914, and George Ellison, who was killed just 90 minutes before the Armistice came into effect at 11am on November 11, 1918.