Havant Remembrance Sunday parade: Veterans speak of importance of remembering

The parade started at 10.40 am, and made its way from the Royal British Legion (RBL) ex-servicemen’s club on Brockhampton Lane, to the war memorial near St Faith’s Church at around 10.50 am.

Rector of Havant, Canon Tom Kennar, led the following remembrance service outside the church from around 10.55am to 11.40am.

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Havant RBL Chairman, Rick Standen, 74, said that remembrance was about ‘the people that all those years ago, gave up their lives to keep the country free’.

Mr Standen served in the Royal Artillery at Thorney Island and in Northern Ireland, as well as a sergeant store supervisor in former Yugoslavia and Dortmund, Germany, through the Cold War.

‘Every one of them was something that gave me memories, good or bad, and gave me friends and colleagues that I would have never known… [still] a lot of them here today,’ he said.

The service included a rendition of the Last Post on a bugle followed by the two-minute silence, as well as a rendition of God Save the King, and the tolling of the church bell for each of the 161

names immortalised on the Havant war memorial.

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‘It’s the one time throughout the year where we pull the nation together in one act of remembrance,’ said Alex Speigt, 52, one of the mentors for the Independent Cadet Force and a veteran of the first Gulf War.

‘Actually as time goes on the very people we are honouring become less and less. We all talk about the Great War but there’s been many other wars and conflicts since where lots of people

have lost their lives, in Afghanistan and in other conflicts around the world.’

At the end of the service, more than 30 wreaths were laid by members of the armed forces, including Mr Standen and Mr Speigt, as well as Havant borough councillors and the MP for Havant Alan

Mak.