Given the circumstances I hope the Forum won't mind my mentioning a special edition of BBC1 "Countryfile" to be shown this coming weekend. This was brought to my attention by my mother who witnessed the TV cameras filming at the Forest Church War Memorial a couple of weeks ago.

From the BBC website:
"To mark Remembrance Sunday, Countryfile visits the Royal Forest of Dean, one of our most ancient and beautiful woodlands. Ellie Harrison discovers how the forest became a resource in wartime, when she meets the 'lumberjills'- women who took on the role of forester to help the war effort.

Matt Baker takes a walk through the forest following a giant sculpture trail, and along the way he meets the artist who turned a quiet glade into a place of remembrance and contemplation. In Oxfordshire, Helen Skelton finds out how men from the countryside were trained as a secret army during World War Two.

Finally, Matt and Ellie meet up in Drybrook Church, at the forest's northern edge, to find out more about its wartime history and pay tribute to the servicemen and women who put their lives on the line in conflicts from the trenches of World War One to the deserts of Afghanistan."

To be shown 6.20pm Sunday 11th November.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01nzknv

"They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old.
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them".

This is just one verse of a poem by Laurence Binyon first published just two months into the Great War....
http://www.westernfrontassociation.com/great-war-people/48-brothers-arms/81-going-down-...