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Yesterday was Remembrance Sunday and across the British Isles, services of commemoration and wreath laying took place as many folk remembered those who served and sacrificed, especially in the two world wars.
It’s also a very personal family occasion for us. Each year at a war memorial, we lay a small wooden cross with a poppy on it detailing the names of loved ones who are now sadly gone.
They include my late dad, Rev Dr Robert Coulter MBE, who served with the Ulster Special Constabulary, affectionately known as the B Specials or B Men, and who in later life was president of an USC Association.
The others on the wee cross are William Ferris, my wife’s grandfather, who served on the Western Front during the Second World War; my grandfather John Coulter, who served with the Royal Flying Corps in World War One; my great uncle Billy Coulter, who served with the Northumberland Fusiliers in the Great War and the Home Guard in World War Two.
There is also my great uncle Ricky Coulter, who served with the RAF during World War Two and was shot down over Europe, but his body was never recovered. There is also another great uncle, William Holmes, who served with the British Army and was killed at the Battle of Cambrai in 1917, but his body was never recovered as he was hit by a German shell and blown to bits.
And in more modern times, there is the name of my cousin Arthur Henderson, an RUC Reservist, who was murdered by a Provisional IRA booby-trap car bomb whilst he was on duty in the Co Tyrone village of Stewartstown in the Seventies.
While the ceremony of planting the wee cross lasts only a matter of seconds, it is nonetheless a very moving occasion for myself and other family members with me.
I have the freedom today in 2025 to do this because of the service and sacrifice of those family members and tens of thousands of others. Can we even contemplate the type of Northern Ireland we would be living in if the German Kaiser had won the Great War, or Nazi tyrant Hitler had won World War Two, or the Provos had driven the British out?
As the years go by, there are less and less veterans alive from these conflicts. Very few, if any, veterans exist who served in the Great War. Likewise, it is only a matter of time before there are no veterans alive from the Second World War.
Similarly, while many veterans are still with us from the Troubles conflict, how many security forces veterans still remain from the IRA’s earlier border terror campaign of 1956-62 which the RUC and especially the B Specials played such a vital military role in defeating?
To ensure the freedoms for which they served, died or were maimed remain, the time has come to make the poppy worn all year round. There should also be more Armed Forces Days to mark the vital role which our veterans - alive or dead - have played, and our existing security forces still play.
A situation must not be allowed to develop as existed in Southern Ireland for decades when many who fought with the British forces were snubbed when they returned from the fighting, or lay in unmarked graves militarily.
During my time in the tabloids, I had the privilege of being part of a campaign to have Irishmen who had won the Victoria Cross, the British forces’ highest award for bravery, honoured by having the VC carved on their headstones.
Even dating well back beyond the Great War, there was a number of ex-military VC heroes buried in Southern Ireland whose honour had not been recognised.
Similarly, I was also involved in the campaign to have the names of soldiers from Ireland cleared who were shot for cowardice during the Great War when in reality they were suffering from what became known as shell shock.
They became known as the Shot At Dawn soldiers who were executed during World War One by firing squad. More than two dozen Irish soldiers have had their names cleared.
Tomorrow, Tuesday 11th November, is Armistice Day when at 11 am that day the guns of the Great War officially fell silent.
Remembrance Sunday and Armistice Day always provides us in the geographical island of Ireland to remember our real patriotic dead; those from Ireland who genuinely donned the military uniforms and fought for freedoms gained in the two world wars and in subsequent conflicts because there was no other alternative to confronting tyranny.
The service and sacrifice of these security forces personnel cannot in any way be compared to the murderous activities of terrorists. Terrorists who plant no warning bombs or murder off-duty security forces in their homes or butcher innocent civilians at random are not ‘patriotic dead’. They are criminals.
To call terrorists ‘patriotic dead’ is an insult to the tens of thousands of nationalists and unionists who donned the uniforms of the British forces and fought and died side by side against the Kaiser and Hitler and later in Korea, Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Irish history is currently going through a period of extreme revisionism, especially by republicans.
A situation must never be allowed to emerge whereby those from both religious communities in Ireland who donned the various uniforms of the Crown and fought to protect freedom and democracy are airbrushed out of that history only to be replaced by terrorist killers of the republican movement.
One way of ensuring that this heinous revisionism does not succeed is for the poppy to become a year-long symbol by it being proudly worn continuously.
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| Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter John is a Director for Belfast’s Christian radio station, Sunshine 1049 FM. |
