Operation Banner Remembered

While veterans of the UK's longest ever military campaign - Operation Banner - are to be honoured, without controversy next week - the same can't be said of similar moves planned for Gulf veterans in Northern Ireland.

The Ministry of Defence is to remember service personnel and associated staff who lost their lives or were injured in the 38-year operation that marked Northern Ireland's Troubles.

St Paul's Cathedral will be used for the main event, on September 10, and will follow another service at the National Memorial Arboretum next week, to pay tribute to those who served.

By way of illustration, this month's Royal British Legion magazine, Legion, carries an interview with General Sir Richard Dannatt, the outspoken Chief of the General Staff.

As a young officer he recalls how he served in the Province every year of the 1970s, except one, and his reflection on the year 1972 in particular recalls how the Army alone lost 120 soldiers to IRA actions in a single year.

"Mercifully, even in the worst years in Iraq and Afghanistan together, our list of fatalities has not reached those levels," the top officer commented.

Meanwhile, as plans are advanced to organise 'Homecoming' parades to honour soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan back to Northern Ireland, splits have emerged along traditional sectarian lines more fitting to the previous 38-years of the Troubles.

Responding to debate over the parades idea, Robin Newton, the East Belfast DUP MLA, and colleague of First Minister Peter Robinson, who also supports the 'homecoming', praised the Royal British Legion's response (recent NI commemorative event pictured) which he labelled "decorous and dignified".

"Maturity, consideration and thoughtfulness are required if this matter is to proceed without causing hurt to the RIR soldiers and caring families that have waited patiently and anxiously while they do their duty in dangerous foreign fields,” he said.

See: RIR To Parade

(BMcC)