Ben Bentley meets some of the county’s dwindling band of war veterans
They are survivors. Survivors of war, survivors of life. Veterans Alf Davies and David Bridge, 87 and 84 respectively, have between them notched up more than 120 years of service in the Royal British Legion.
It is here that, soon after being demobbed at the end of the Second World War, Alf and David found comradeship among fellow survivors.
See also: Remembrance events
Comradeship, maybe. But in all their 60 years apiece in the Legion, rarely does word cross their lips of their own experiences in the battlefield.
Says David, a former member of the Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Navy: “You’ve got too many that did not come back, it’s the way the coin drops. I consider myself lucky that I’m here.”
Sitting next to him over a pub lunch following a special presentation to commemorate their long service is Alf, who signed up at the age of 19 as a volunteer, requested to join the Royal Engineers and was mainly preoccupied with building Bailey bridges with his field company.
But he was also part of the Normandy landings, reaching the beach at 4.30 in the morning on an open-fronted Bren carrier.
He says: “Part of our job was lifting mines from the beaches. My platoon sergeant was lifting one and it had been booby trapped and he was blown clean up.
“I don’t really talk about these times, they are pretty awful when you saw all the corpses.”
Demobbed in August 1946, exactly two years later at the Red Lion pub in Bomere Heath Alf joined the Baschurch branch of the British Legion.
“It was comradeship – we had shared experiences, so to speak,” he says, recalling the early days of Legion life over a spot of lunch with David and fellow branch members.
But down the years these old boys have seen many changes in the Royal British Legion, including dwindling membership numbers and branches closing down.
Alf says: “In those days it was much more friendly, in my opinion. Today it’s much more like an insurance company.
“When I joined there were well over 100 members and when I became secretary in 1957 we were 130 strong.”
Alf also bemoans the fact that in his day he could approach the regional office of the organisation in Worcester and get support immediately.
Today, with red tape to wade through, it’s a matter of going through the organisation’s national headquarters.
The British Legion was formed in 1921 in the wake of the Great War, a period when Britain was not a land fit for heroes, with many veterans returning from the front line to find they faced a new battle – this time for homes and the right to work.
Against this backdrop of dissatisfaction and unrest, the Legion’s purpose was to look after the welfare of ex-servicemen and their families. By 1925 the British Legion had formed 2,500 branches and had 145,000 members.
The organisation spawned scores of branches across Shropshire alone, many of which continue proudly to support veterans to this day.
Alf recalls how, as secretary of the branch between 1957 and 1967, he was also welfare secretary, his role to visit and help people in need.
“In those days if a member was ill and out of work they applied for help and we gave them vouchers for coal or provisions,” he says.
“I dealt with quite a number but it was very rewarding work.”
David, an aspiring farmer who as a youth had been a “mud student” at Harper Adams College, followed his brother Arthur, one of the last to escape from Dunkirk, to war.
As the campaign gained momentum, David tried but failed to join the forces, being placed in a reserve occupation before being given the choice of submarines or Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Navy. He joined the latter on the 77th pilots course.
Like Alf, David is loath to talk about his war, but remembers his early days with the British Legion, initially in his home village of Llansantffraid in 1948 and later at Baschurch, with great affection.
He says: “It was much more communal. We were all ex-servicemen and had been to war.
“I came out of the services and the country wanted food. We had bread rationing until 1952 but the British Legion made life much more liveable.
“We had a drink and talked. You didn’t really talk about the war, not at all in fact – you had done what you had to do and you didn’t speak about it afterwards.”
He later joined the Cockshutt branch in 1958. “They were good days but it seemed to die a bit,” says David who subsequently joined the old boys of Baschurch.
Like all branches of the British Legion, with an inevitably ageing membership it is as prone as others to the revolving door of life.
He continues: “It’s always sad to see people go but it’s a door we all have to go through at some stage. Plenty of us are lucky not to have gone through it many, many moons ago.”
Today, the work of the Royal British Legion in Shropshire continues to support old soldiers as well as those returning from modern warfare and can count as members a number of servicemen from the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts.
The importance of the role of the organisation is underlined by the success of its annual Poppy Appeal, whose funds continue to support ex-servicemen. Today, a simple poppy pinned to the lapels of ordinary people is a powerful reminder of the role of Royal British Legion, and in Shropshire the work of its membership as part of the Poppy Appeal is particularly strong.
Says David: “The Royal British Legion is still extremely important – the Poppy Appeal for one thing. And secondly it ensures that those who did not come back from war are remembered. ‘Lest we forget’ is the most important of the lot.
“There might be fewer of us today, but we never forget those who gave their lives.”
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