Come rain or shine, join us this Sunday at the AJEX Annual Remembrance Parade along Whitehall and at The Cenotaph.
The freedom to carry an umbrella if it rains!
This annual Parade in London, one week on from Remembrance Sunday, began nearly 90 years ago, with the intention of honouring the Jewish Servicemen and Women who had served in the Great War, at a time when antisemitism was on the rise. 55,000 Jewish men and women had been in British military uniform during that conflict, and thousands had not returned. It was also a clear political statement – we served, we are a part of this country’s security, not a threat to it.
In the next World War 70,000 Jews served in the British Forces, once again prepared to sacrifice their lives for all our universal peace and security. Once again many would not return.
Yet it is not just those who make the ultimate sacrifice that pay the cost of war. It is all those who give up their comforts and individual freedoms to be part of an organisation that must work as a coordinated dedicated body if it is to be capable to respond to attacks threats. Those in the military must work together in some of the toughest most difficult conditions to ensure that all of us remain safe.
In 1917, 105 years ago it was one of the wettest summers on record, and it tragically coincided with the planned Third Battle of Ypres often known as Passchendaele. Soldiers and airman served in the most terrible of conditions, battling mud, neck deep in the shell holes as well as facing the enemy and their guns. Nurses fought to keep their frontline hospitals sanitary while the Flanders fields around them became a quagmire. As many seemed to die or become ill from the conditions as much as from the bombs and bullets. Nonetheless, the fighting continued and the battle aims eventually largely achieved, despite the terrible conditions experienced by all.
40 years ago as the British Paratroopers carried out their ‘Yomp’ across the Falklands to take the Islands back from the Argentine invaders, they battled the wind and rain of a South Atlantic winter. Their steely determination carried them on across open ground where they would fight, sleep march and die until victory was theirs.
In both of these battles British Jews served, in both of these wars Jews died. There are numerous graves carrying a Magen David at Tyne Cot CWGC Cemetery where many of the Passchendaele dead are buried. And Jason Burt the second youngest of the British War dead from the Falklands War (April to June 1982), has his name carved on the war memorials of the dead from that conflict.
For those who returned they remained scarred by their experiences, often never fully recovering from the whole experience regardless of the conditions of their service. The privations that a military force experience is part of the reality of service. It is not a warm office job, or 9 to 5 hours.
This weekend, if it is raining, don’t let that put you off from coming to the parade to show your respect for the sacrifice that our Armed Forces have made, do make and continue to make. All the hardships that they have endured allow us to have the freedom to simply carry an umbrella when its wet rather than cower for fear from those who would otherwise oppress us in all weathers.
