Wootton Bassett's tribute to the fallen
Updated on 14 July 2009
The bodies of eight British soldiers killed during the army's bloodiest 24 hours in Afghanistan have been flown home. Jane Deith writes from the town of Wootton Bassett as the funeral cortege passed through.
For a long time the only sound was the bell tolling.
Then the sound of applause drifted up the street, signalling the approach of the cars carrying the coffins. As they passed, people around me started to clap too and carried on clapping until the last coffin passed by.
Each was covered in a Union Jack. Some people threw flowers which landed on the roofs and windscreens of the cars. I watched one soldier trying hard not to cry. When the convoy had gone the veterans silently furled their flags.
The Royal British Legion was here at 10 in the morning. Others simply stopped and put down their shopping bags to wait for the cortege of coffins.
The crowd lined the road the length of the high street, a dozen deep. Bikers struck up conversation with fireman, women holding babies chatted to Normandy veterans.
Members of the 2nd Battalion The Rifles were here too, waiting for the coffins of five of their soldiers. One of them was Corporal Jonathan Horne, who was killed trying to rescue soldiers after an explosion in Sangin.
His family and friends have travelled in convoy from his home in Walsall. They brought a pick-up truck with a Union Jack in the back window, printed with the words "RIP Jay, Walsall Hero".
Perhaps it was the fact the eight soldiers were all young - teenagers or in their twenties - that meant there were so many young faces in the crowd. There were young soldiers in uniform standing with their girlfriends.
Further down the high street a group of teenagers unfurled a banner and wrote tribute to the soldiers in marker pen.
A forces town
Wootton Bassett is a forces town. RAF Lyneham is only four miles from here. Often the soldiers who the locals stand to remember are from bases hundreds of miles away.
But Wootton Bassett has become the unofficial home for the ceremony that honour them. This is not a place that people will discuss the politics of the "war on terror" or the rights and wrongs of the campaigns in Afghanistan. Loyalty to the troops and what they're doing there goes without saying here.
They'll tell you they feel it's their duty to pay their respects and pay respect on behalf of people around the country who can't come.
The emotion of the occasion spilled over before the coffins came, in the Cross Keys pub earlier. Officers, soldiers, civilians and relatives stood around the television watching the picture of the soldiers coffins being taken off the plane. Many watched in tears.
Wootton Bassett always turns out when soldiers are repatriated. But today there are many, many more than usual. One veteran said to lose eight young men in a week had shocked everybody. They were "innocents", he said.
Loukas McCutcheon and Edward Foster are 18 years old and preparing for their first tour of duty in Afghanistan with A Company, 3rd Battalion The Rifles.
They say the army has done everything it can to get them ready mentally for how hard it will be in Helmand and for the possibility that they might not come home.
Loukas says he's already planned what will happen to his personal belongs if the worst happens. He doesn't mind admitting it, he's scared.
