60-year promise kept as Commonwealth war heroes remembered

A service of remembrance was held at Astwood Cemetery over the weekend to remember the 154 servicemen who now lie there under the care of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

The cemetery is home to 95 scattered burials from the First World War and a further 46 from World War Two.

The majority of these burials are of servicemen from the United Kingdom, but there are also three Poles, one Canadian, and one Czechoslovakian.

Also remembered on Sunday, November 20, were five German and three Italian servicemen who died for a cause their governments believed in.

The Act of Remembrance was organised by the Worcester branch of the Royal British Legion and the local branch of the Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters Regimental Association.

The tradition began in 1962, when the mother of a young soldier called Carl Furst contacted the Royal British Legion to ask if they would lay flowers on her son’s grave.

Since then, the Royal British Legion has held a service of remembrance.

Remembrance service at Astwood Cemetery. Alan Bray & Tomasz Wisniewski (Image: Alan Bray & Tomasz Wisniewski)

Vice Lord-Lieutenant and county president of the Worcestershire Royal British Legion, brigadier Roger Brunt CBE DL, spoke at the service, with his closing words taken from the ANZAC Memorial in Gallipoli.

“The whole earth is a sepulchre of heroes, monuments may rise and tablets be set up to them in their own land, but there is an abiding memorial that no pen or chisel has traced - It is graven not on stone or brass, but on the living heart of humanity, and the palm of Almighty God,” he said.

“Take these men as your example, like them remember that prosperity can only be for the free, and that freedom is the possession of those who have the courage to defend it.”

Remembrance service at Astwood Cemetery. Alan Bray & Tomasz Wisniewski (Image: Alan Bray & Tomasz Wisniewski)

Also in attendance was Tom Wisniewski, founder of the Worcestershire Polish Association.

He said: “At a ceremony built on a promise kept for more than half a century was a chance to remember Polish, British, and allied soldiers, all those who fell in war, prisoners of war, their families and emphasised a message of peace.

Tomasz Wisniewski lays a poppy wreath (Image: Alan Bray & Tomasz Wisniewski)

“Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.

“At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them.”