Today I joined the thousands of serving service personnel and retired service personnel who paid tribute to everyone who has paid the ultimate price for this country and others.
Death is nothing at all, I have only slipped away into the next room. I am waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near just around the corner all is well. Gone from our daily life but never from our hearts. RIP lads & lassies
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| Ready for the Off |
Shoes Shined, kilt ironed and medals polished, ready to pay my respects.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old,
Age shall not weary them,
At the going down of the sun
And in the morning
WE WILL REMEMBER THEM.
I am in Angola but at the right time, I switched channels, told the wife and my four year old boy, 'this is important' and they sat there in respectful silence.
ReplyDeleteMy boy looked at your photo and he started asking me all sorts of questions about you in your rig that I could not answer.
There are a lot of civilians out there (and even ex Army officers of different regiments) who are ignorant of the significance of the variety of uniforms and medals they see veterans wearing.
Would you be kind enough to, with photographs, take us through your rig with little explanations?
It would be very interesting for me and the boy and, I am sure, lots of other people as well.
There isn't that much to explain mate to be honest,being Scottish origin & before I left the services I had a kilt which I wore together with my mess dress to Scottish occasions such as Burns nights etc, as I was serving in a Scottish Artillery unit and it was looked upon as keeping up Scottish traditions, so naturally when I left I bought a new kilt and jacket and wear it at special occasions. My tie is the Royal Artillery tie and the medals like all veterans are the medals awarded to us in service of our country which we are allowed to wear.
ReplyDeleteThere is a couple of other medals which I dont like to wear as they were presented by foreign countries as a symbol of thank you for service in their country but I only wear my medals issued to me by The British Government, for campaigns or wars that I have participated in.
Too many people nowadays are wearing medals that they are not entitled to which I think personally is disrespectful to the memory of all the lads, We have a saying for them in the forces communities "Walts"
Walter Mitty's... You should have seen how many of them were here in Angola in the early Nineties and are now, according to my old mate, running around Afghanistan.
ReplyDeleteI only ever got one medal (for being first in the NAAFI queue every day for a week) so it would be nice if you could spare the time, photograph yours, photogragh yer sporran, yer Skein Dhu, cap badge, explain what they are all about and all that malarkey so that I can go through it with the boys. Dominic, the thirteen year old, reads your blog and together we read it out to the younger one, Alex, four, as a sort of bedtime story where we appreciate and talk about the pictures as well. I could just look everything up on the interweb but blogs are so much more compelling and personal.
Don't forget, you and yer bloody handmade floats and wonderful fishing stories is the main reason I dug a flaming great pond in Africa so I can teach the boys to fly fish!
I wont be able to do it straight away mate but give me some time & I will knock something up for you just finding time right now and that isn't much, even the floats have had to take a hit recently.
ReplyDelete