Queen attends Cenotaph Remembrance service

Sun Nov 8 2009 20:05:21

The Queen has led the nation's tribute to those who have died and been wounded serving in the British Armed Forces.

Her Majesty joined other members of the Royal Family, the Prime Minister, opposition leaders, Commonwealth High Commissioners and representatives from the Army, Navy and Air Force for the ceremony at the Cenotaph, on London's Whitehall.

After the service 7,500 ex-service personnel and 1,600 civilians marched past the Cenotaph.

Earlier, around 2000 British troops at Camp Bastion in Afghanistan also remembered the fallen, on the day news came of the death of another soldier, killed in a blast in Helmand. He was the 94th British fatality in Afghanistan this year.

Gordon Brown expressed Britain's gratitude to the men and women serving in the armed forces, in a podcast posted on the No 10 website on the eve of the Remembrance Sunday commemorations.

The Prime Minister said that it was a "sacred duty" to honour the troops' courage and sacrifice, and that the thoughts of the nation would be with the troops serving in Afghanistan.

He said: "Each life lost represents a family in mourning - a table with an empty space this Christmas, a father who will not be there to walk his daughter down the aisle, a parent who has had to bury their child too soon and a partner who has lost the person they hoped to grow old with."

The mounting death toll of UK forces in the country also dominated thoughts at Saturday's annual Festival of Remembrance in London.

There were constant references to events in Afghanistan during the evening and the audience at the Royal Albert Hall, including the Queen and the Prime Minister, were shown film of operations to fly wounded servicemen back to Britain and interviews with soldiers expressing sadness at the loss of their colleagues.

The event, for many years devoted to remembering the dead of the First and Second World Wars, had a change of emphasis this year in the wake of military losses in Afghanistan, where the British death toll since operations began there in 2001 has risen to 230.

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