Veterans pay tribute at nation’s Field of Remembrance

More than a dozen D-Day veterans have attended a service to officially open the Royal British Legion’s annual Field of Remembrance at the National Memorial Arboretum.

The tribute at the site in Alrewas, Staffordshire, honours all those who have died in conflict and will remain open to visitors until November 17.

The Field of Remembrance was opened at a service on Monday, featuring thousands of individual tributes bearing messages submitted by members of the public.

D-Day veteran Norman Williams, who served as a sergeant in the Inns of Court Regiment during the Second World War, read the First World War poem In Flanders Fields at the service.

Speaking afterwards, Mr Williams, from Staffordshire, stressed the importance of acts of remembrance.

“I think Poppy Day, for example, is so important – the remembrance with poppies alone from the First World War, when it was a slaughterhouse really, thousands and thousands killed, and up to your knees in mud, disease, rats, the lot.

“God knows how they stood it really those people. It’s worth remembering those – definitely.”