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Service of Remembrance, Queens Park Loughborough,

[Sunday 11th November 2018]

 

A view from the Bandstand.

 

Loughborough Concert Band had the honour of being invited to play at the Service of Remembrance in Queen’s Park, commemorating the 100th Year since the signing of the Armistice Treaty at the end of the First World War. It really is a remarkable event and from the vantage point of the bandstand there is much to be seen.

We played as the congregation was coming in dressed in warm clothes and hats as the day was windy and not promising. They came in groups or singly, some pushing be-medalled veterans, some pushing children in buggies and some with toddlers riding on their shoulders.

The music chosen reflected the sadness and solemnity of the occasion and to name but a few Hymn to the Fallen, Prelude to the 49th Parallel and Chanson de Martin began our programme in suitable mood.

As well as the hymns and prayers the service included an account of how the news of peace broke on Loughborough 100 years ago, the celebrations by some and the mixed feelings inevitably held by those families who could never be the same again. It also included the moving Kohima Epitaph, inscribed to memorialise the Battle of Kohima:

When you go home

Tell them of us and say

For your tomorrow we gave our today.

 

The two minutes silence and the fall of poppies from the Carillon was broken by the blowing of a World War l whistle.

 

The band played while people went home: The British Legion March, Nimrod, WWl Medley and The Colditz March.

 

The wind had blown our banners and our music. We had cold feet and faces. But we were all glad to have been able to contribute to the memorial service held for a generation who did not live to take for granted, as we are able to do, the NHS, the rise of the supermarket and the music of the Beatles. They gave everything. We gave a couple of hours.

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LCB at St Botolph's Church, Shepshed
LCB at St Botolph's Church, Shepshed