BY ROGER WATSON
I made my first visit to the National Armed Forces Memorial at the Arboretum in Staffordshire this week. The memorial, opened in 2001 and run by The Royal British Legion but funded by an independent charity, exists to commemorate members of the armed forces who have died since 1948. Since that date there have been over 16,000 deaths in over 50 conflicts involving British armed forces personnel. Anyone dying within a theatre of war or killed in an act of terrorism is recorded.
I was lucky to be accompanied by recently retired Colour Sergeant Stephen Phillips, man and boy a Scots Guard. He is also, I am pleased to say, my son-in-law. The only war in which I served—the First Gulf War—claimed 47 servicemen. Stephen, involved in the invasion of Iraq, a veteran of several tours of Afghanistan and further experience in Iraq, pointed to almost as many people he knew whose names feature on the main memorial and on the Afghanistan War memorial. Each one had a story, some died saving their comrades and others died later of their wounds.
The Arboretum is an impressive place. Beautifully kept grounds house the Armed Forces Memorial, which is the centrepiece, and there are over 400 other memorials scattered around the grounds but organised separately under the three branches of the service: army, navy and air force. The naval section recognises the contribution of the Merchant Navy and the Royal Fleet Auxiliary and the air force section recognises the Fleet Air Arm. Organisations such as the YMCA, the Orange Order and Toc H also have memorials. Every memorial has been carefully designed and some are truly impressive. Courtesy of my son-in-law I had an explanation of how the memorial to The Household Division is organised and which regiments it contains, including his own.
I was pleased to see such an extensive area dedicated to my own old regiment the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) and that all of the holders of the VC were celebrated separately. The RAMC has won a remarkable 27 VCs, outdone only by the Royal Artillery (51) and the Royal Engineers (41). However, the RAMC has the distinction of having two out of only three holders of the VC and Bar in Noel Godfrey Chavasse and Arthur Martin-Leake. The other is New Zealander infantryman Captain Charles Upham.
The main memorial is made of Portland stone and built as two large, 43 metre diameter curved walls which semi-encircle two large flat walls. Contained within the memorial are two very symbolic bronze sculptures, the creation of Ian Rank-Broadley. There are two slits, one in the east facing outer wall and one in the adjacent flat wall. If the sun is shining it lines up with these two slits at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of November casting a shaft of light into the centre of the monument.
The name of each serviceman and servicewoman eligible for inclusion is carved in order of death. The names are organised by year and then under the service arm. Thus under 1982 and ‘Army’ the name ‘Jones HJ VC OBE’ appears. No rank, no gender but this was Col H Jones who led the charge and lost his life at Goose Green in the Falklands War. Further along under 2013 and ‘Army’ appears the name ‘Rigby L’ who, of course, was the brutally murdered Fusilier Lee Rigby, killed by Muslim fanatics.
My son-in-law easily located all his fallen comrades, many his very close friends, as he had visited recently. Prompted by my wife, we also located the name ‘Laws RG’ under ‘Army’ in 2009. This young man, known as Robbie (pictured above), graduated with my son from the Army Foundation College in Harrogate. He was sent on a tour of Afghanistan and died very shortly after arriving. He was 18 years old. Later we located his inscription on the Afghanistan War memorial where his death was recorded as ‘4 July 2009 PTE RG LAWS Mercian’. It transpired that my son-in-law was on the same tour, and he pointed to all his friends who had also died on the same tour.
Amidst many moving monuments and moments as we walked the grounds, it was impossible not to be moved deeply by the Shot at Dawn Memorial which commemorates the 346 men killed by firing squad, accused of cowardice during the First World War. Of the individual memorials contained therein that I inspected, the vast majority of those remembered were aged 18 and 19 years. We now recognise that many, if not all, of these men were suffering from PTSD. My son-in-law pointed out several times during our walk that he has lost far more friends to suicide caused by PTSD than were ever killed in action. Sadly, there is no memorial to them.
As we approach Remembrance Sunday, the Arboretum will be the venue for a memorial service prior to that on 11th November. The most recent entry is from 2021 and it precedes a significant area of blank stone awaiting further names. It is fanciful to imagine that, eventually, this will not eventually be full. They will all be dead, but they will not be forgotten.
Roger Watson is a Registered Nurse and Editor-in-Chief of Nurse Education in Practice.