THOUSANDS lined the streets of Worcester to remember the sacrifice of the fallen who paid the ultimate price in conflicts past and present.

Worcester Cathedral was full with servicemen, ex-servicemen, dignitaries and members of the public who honoured the slain on Remembrance Sunday.

The Dean of Worcester, the Very Reverend Peter Atkinson, spoke of the importance of remembering the fallen, including those “shot at dawn” who were once termed cowards.

The Worcestershire Regiment, he said, carried out more such executions than any other but that these men, their names lost in an act of “deliberate official forgetting”, were now officially remembered and honoured in what he called “a more compassionate era”.

He said: “There must be honesty in our remembering, a truthful remembering. Sometimes we try and shape the past for our own comfort. The truth is often uncomfortable. Sometimes we like to select what we remember.”

The Dean also spoke of the pain that could accompany memory. He said: “There is the easy route of forgetting what is too painful to bear and the more mature route of bearing those painful memories of the strife and facing them. Real remembering is truthful remembering.

“Our task is to do what we can to build a world in such a way that our children, our grandchildren, our great grandchildren and our remote descendants look back on us with thankfulness and do not find our world a memory too painful for them to bear.”

Crowds then gathered at the cenotaph for the act of remembrance itself. Standards were lowered for 11am and a gun was fired before the beginning of the two minute silence.

Wreaths were laid by dignitaries including the mayor of Worcester, Coun Pat Agar, and MP Robin Walker. Others to attend the ceremony included Coun Adrian Gregson, leader of Worcester City Council, the High Sheriff of Worcestershire, Nicholas Wentworth-Stanley, and the Deputy Lord Lieutenant of Worcestershire, David Williams-Thomas.

Ken Barclay, aged 76, of Evesham who was in the Royal Green Jackets in the 1950s said after the service: “It is one of the days one puts aside to remember one’s friends and one’s history, those that gave their lives and still are giving their lives for that matter. The service in the cathedral was very good. I have been to many services now and that was one of the better ones.”

Mark Jackson, a trustee of the Mercian Regiment and a former lieutenant colonel in the Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters where he spent 36 years, said: “Remembrance Sunday is very important. Firstly we remember the fallen but secondly it makes those of us living today look to the future.

“Although it started after the First World War and continued after the Second World War we must continue to remember those who have fallen since.”