BATTLE-SCARRED veterans and raw recruits spoke of their sadness at the last reunion of the Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters before it merges into a new super-regiment.

But soldiers fresh or frail agreed - the regiment will be remembered as long as those who fought in its ranks keep the standard flying.

Hundreds of soldiers, past and present, descended on Worcester Rugby Club at Sixways for the Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters Association annual reunion on Saturday.

The reunion was the last before the regiment becomes the 2nd battalion of the Mercian Regiment which will also absorb soldiers from regiments in Cheshire and Staffordshire following a ceremony on Saturday, September 1, in Tamworth.

Young blood fighting in Afghanistan will not be left out - a component of the 650 troops serving in Helmand province will take part in the ceremony via videolink when they will officially surrender their badge and name.

Major Bob Prophet, the regimental secretary, said: "The reunions will continue as long as people want them to continue. This is not at all the swan song of the regiment. Like any regiment, we can only keep in touch with those soldiers who keep in touch with us.

"In theory there could still be thousands of people who have served with the regiment who we don't know about."

Major Prophet, aged 62, said a database kept track of the whereabouts of more than 2,000 ex-serviceman from the regiment, keeping them informed of any developments.

Major Prophet served in Northern Ireland in 1971 and 1983 and in Bosnia in 1992.

He had been on holiday in Croatia only to find himself back in the Balkans a year a later with "a gun in his hand".

Ex-servicemen showed they were keeping the traditions alive on the day as they marched past Regimental Colonel Jonny Hackett CBE and gave him their final salute before the regiment disappears forever.

Nick Tyler, 45, was in the 1st battalion of the Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters, serving in Northern Ireland between 1979 and 1987. He then joinined the Territorial Army at the 214 battery in Worcester and served with them in Iraq in 2004.

Mr Tyler, of Foregate Street, Worcester, now a steward at the rugby club, said: "This reunion helps to keep the regiment going. The Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters have a long history. It's a family.

"The merger means they are taking the family gold and bringing newcomers in which nobody really wants. I will always be a Worcestershire and Sherwood Forester."

Barry Freeman, 82, from Stourport-on-Severn served with the regiment as a private in World War Two in 1944, fighting in Rouen and receiving a shrapnel injury to his chin in Belgium.

Mr Freeman said: "I'm not happy about the merger of the regiments. It's disgusting. This gathering is the last of the Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters. Next year I shall not come anymore. I was originally part of the Worcester regiment and I didn't like it when we joined the Sherwood Foresters in 1970."

One soldier, Pete Draper, aged 17, is too young to fly out to Afghanistan but will join the rest of the men in September.

He said: "I'm looking forward to it and eager to get out there. I will be nervous nearer the time but I'm not at the moment.

"I'm proud that I joined the regiment before it became the Mercians."

Peter Jones, 82, was also present - he has attended 62 regimental reunions.

Mr Jones, who was a sergeant and the regiment's chief clerk, helped organise the first ever reunion for the Worcester regiment in 1946 when he was stationed at Norton Barracks in Worcester. He was instrumental in forming the company branch of the Worcestershire Regimental Association on April 2, 1949, two days after he was demobbed.

He has carried the Coventry branch standard for the association for 50 years and this was the 62nd reunion he had attended.

Robin Rennie, of Barn Lane, Sedgebarrow, was also there to promote a book, Letters from Malaya, a collection of letters from her mother, Joan Francis Mills, to her mother, about life in Malaya, where her husband was stationed as part of the Royal Electrical Mechanical Engineers in the 1950s during the Malayan Communist Party revolt.

FACTS ABOUT THE REGIMENT

* The regiment was formed on February 28, 1970, when the Worcester regiment merged with the Sherwood Foresters. It faces a second merger in September when it will become part of the Mercian Regiment.

* About 650 troops from the regiment are fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan following intensive training in the Brecon Beacons in Wales.

* The Mercian Regiment, when it is formed, will have a new badge - a white double-headed eagle and a new motto, Stand Firm and Strike Hard.' The old badge - an elongated garter star badge with a hind on it - will disappear. The two-coloured Lincoln green and maroon sash for which the Woofers are famous, will be kept.

* The Regiment has three museums - the Worcestershire Regiment Museum in Worcester City Museum and Art Gallery, the Sherwood Foresters Museum in Nottingham Castle and the Sherwood Foresters Museum in Derby City Museum and Art Gallery.

* The regiment is based at Hounslow but will have a permanent barracks in Belfast from April 2008.

* The regimental mascot is a ram called Private Derby XXVIII.

* One of the regiment's keenest supporters is 90-year-old Peggy Edwards of Lincoln Lane, Ronkswood, Worcester. She was born in Norton Barracks and her husband, father and brother served in the regiment.