The prayer offered by the Bishop of London to the thousands of veterans of past wars gathered at the Cenotaph yesterday epitomised the sacrifices being made in Afghanistan, as two more fatalities were reported over the weekend.
"To give and not to count the cost, to fight and not to heed the wounds" — the words of the prayer by St Ignatius of Loyola, spoken at the annual Service of Remembrance by the Right Rev Richard Chartres.
The Ministry of Defence announced yesterday that two soldiers had been killed in Helmand province, bringing the total to 232 since operations began, 201 as a result of enemy action. A soldier from the 2nd Battalion The Rifles and another from the 4th Battalion The Rifles were killed in separate explosions in Sangin.
Every British base, from the smallest outpost to the largest airfields in Kabul, Kandahar and Helmand, marked Remembrance Day yesterday, officials said. Those without pipers or buglers relied on iPods for music. At Camp Bastion, the main British base in Helmand, the runway fell silent as news of the latest deaths emerged.
For most, the two-minute silence and the sound of the Last Post were particularly poignant after a week in which five soldiers were shot dead by an Afghan policeman and two others died.
"I stand here and I grieve," Padre Mark Christian, who led prayers at the British headquarters in Lashkar Gah, said. "I think of the pain of their passing and I think of their families. But that of itself is not what remembrance is about. When we remember we think of those seas of our comrades who have gone before us, the tens of thousands of people who have given their lives for our nation and for what they believe in.
"I think of our core values — courage, discipline, respect for others, integrity, loyalty and selfless commitment. Remembrance for me is picking up the gauntlet, it is steeling ourselves for the fight that lies ahead. For if we do not do that their lives have been given in vain. We are here today to remember, we are here today to commit ourselves to the cause of peace and justice throughout the world."
At the Cenotaph, crowds more than ten deep applauded enthusiastically as 7,500 former servicemen and women and 1,600 civilians marched down Whitehall.
For the first time, there were no servicemen from the First World War at the ceremony. Last year's three surviving British veterans — Bill Stone, Henry Allingham and Harry Patch — have died since last November.
The Queen placed the first wreath at the Cenotaph. She was followed by the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Harry, representing the Prince of Wales who is on an official visit to Canada, and Prince William. The party leaders Gordon Brown, David Cameron, and Nick Clegg each placed wreaths, and David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, carried a wreath on behalf of Britain's overseas territories.
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