UK NEWS

QUEEN'S BACK TO HONOUR HEROES

Monday November 13,2006

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Richard Palmer

THE Queen shrugged off her recent back problem to lead yesterday's two minutes' silence for Britain's fallen war heroes from past and present conflicts.

She stood at the Cenotaph in central London to pay tribute to the 1.5 million servicemen and women who perished in two world wars and the 16,000 who have died on duty since then.

More than 8,000 elderly veterans gathered in Whitehall to pay their respects. There were no Great War veterans – the oldest survivor Henry Allingham, 110, was in France for a service there – but the marchers included relatives of some of the 300 soldiers executed for cowardice or desertion in that conflict and pardoned this year.

A girl carried a Shot At Dawn (SAD) campaign wreath. An Iraq war widow laid a wreath of autumn leaves for those killed on duty since the Second World War.

Raqual Harper-Titchener, 31, was pregnant with her second child when her husband Major Matthew Harper-Titchener, 32, of the Royal Military Police, was killed in Iraq in August 2003. She said: "This is about making the ceremony more relevant to the younger wives as well as the older generation."

The Queen laid the first wreath, followed by Philip, Charles, Andrew, Anne and the Duke of Kent as William, Camilla, Edward and Sophie watched. Harry, a cornet in the Blues and Royals, was with his regiment.