Remembrance day

This is remembrance week and we start with a heart warming story from rural Essex full of musical remembrance. This article tells us:

A bugle played during World War One by a soldier has been used to sound The Last Post at a Remembrance service.

Pte Henry Howard was in the Royal Army Medical Corps, and played his bugle in the army band, his great grandson said.

The bugle hung proudly on the family’s walls for generations but has now been played again to mark the 100th anniversary of the war memorial in Pvt Howard’s home village of Dedham, Essex.

Pte Howard played The Last Post when the memorial was unveiled in 1921.

His great grandson, Mark Manning, 63, was at the ceremony in Dedham earlier to remember the fallen, including Pte Howard’s son-in-law – Mr Manning’s grandfather.

Pte Howard survived the war and lived until 1954, but Mr Manning’s grandfather, Harry Polson, was killed in World War Two, and his name is inscribed on the Dedham memorial.

The village first unveiled its memorial in 1921 and ex-army bugler Henry Howard stood in Royal Square in Dedham, as people fell silent to listen to the melancholy tones of The Last Post, played on his wartime bugle.