Respect For Our Heroes - Wootton Bassett

I as some of you know live in Canada were for years our fallen heroes were brought down the Highway 401 from Trenton to Toronto and people lined the overpasses and after a online petition started it was renamed "Highway Of Heroes" I am very proud to have stood at over fifteen of these processions but wish I didn't have to be on any at all.

For four years the people of Wootton Bassett, a town deep in the English countryside, have played a solemn role in Britain’s war life. Every time a serviceman is killed in Afghanistan or Iraq, his or her body is returned to the nearby base of RAF Lyneham and then driven slowly through the heart of the Wiltshire town. There, hundreds and often thousands of residents have stood silently as the cortège passes by on its way to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford.

The tradition so touched Britain that Queen Elizabeth II did something no monarch had done in more than a century: she gave permission for the ancient town to add “Royal” to its name. It is a bittersweet recognition. In September, RAF Lyneham will shut down, and the repatriations will return to Brize Norton. It is now up to Oxfordshire to plan a route that continues the tradition that Royal Wootton Bassett started.

According to an article I was reading today a group has complained about the route their fallen soldiers are driven down and want it to be changed :

"“I am not sure taking coffins in hearses past schools, past families, past married quarters is necessarily the thing that everybody would wish to see … the focus must be on the families of the dead service personnel. They are the people who care most. That is where our focus is.”

The Ministry of Defence said the route from RAF Brize Norton, where flights had landed until the runway was closed for repair work in 2007, was decided by West Oxfordshire District Council but claimed that the side gate would be used to ensure minimal disruption to normal operations."

You can read the full article on THE TELEGRAPH WEBSITE

A Face Book group has been created called "Respect For Heroes" to protest this decision and you can check it out by clicking HERE or on the photo below :