Good evening and a very warm welcome to this exciting Veterans event, sponsored by WORDSMITH AND PAPER LTD in partnership with the wonderful charity, the Royal British Legion Industries.

My especial thanks to His Grace the Duke of Norfolk for agreeing to let us hold this event here in Arundel Castle’s magnificent Barons’ Hall.

 

So, today is all about the ARMED FORCES COVENANT, a promise that together as a nation, those who serve or have served, and their families, are treated fairly and with respect in the communities, economy, and the society they serve with their lives.

Many of you present are veterans or representing veteran organisations

OR you are the movers and shakers who hopefully have signed up to the Covenant and are in a position to assist veterans in employment, welfare, medical help, education.

 

This is a networking event with the opportunity to speak with each other, and rather like the Great British Bake Off, you have an hour and half to raise the temperature, rise to the occasion and make things happen!

 

My name is Jean Rogers.  I am an actress, so what am I doing here you may well ask, especially as I am, apparently, a PAD’S BRAT having no military experience, although I am the daughter of a WW2 veteran and well remember, in the 50’s, my Dad, though never a bitter men, painfully recalling how difficult it was to get a job in civvy street when he was demobbed at the end of the war.

 

But also, for the past 5 years, up until January this year, I have proudly served as the RBL Sussex County President and have grown to understand the many difficulties our veterans face adapting to civilian society, despite there being the 2014 Covenant, and I’ve looked for some time to arrange an event like this to promote awareness of the need to link veterans up with the support they need.

 

Today is July 1st and I chose it especially for this event as 108 years ago it became the bloodiest day in British Military history at the battle of the Somme.  Nearly 20,000 were killed and over 38,000 wounded, but the day before – yesterday, the 30th June 1916 - is even more significant for us, for it’s the Day Sussex Died when three battalions of the County Regiment - the Sussex Boys - were used as a decoy to draw German attention away from that battle on the Somme the following day, and were slaughtered!

 

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,

Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.

They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;

They fell with their faces to the foe.

 

 

Out of that human devastation and shadow of the Great War charities were formed to help surviving veterans and their families.  One such was the RBLI our partner today, formed in 1919 to help  gassed and injured veterans on their discharge from the Preston Hall hospital in AYLESFORD

 

Today that site has grown into a residential area helping with employment and disability issues, a factory and an incredible Lifeworks Programme.  Find out more from their Relations and Brand Manager Steve Hammond.

 

Steve is himself a prime example of the charity’s success.  A Welsh guardsman wounded on the Sir Galahad during the Falklands war, the RBLI helped heal his mental anguish and gave him back his dignity and purpose in life.

 

Steve took up the baton, as have many of you from dedicated veteran organisations and charities among us today and this is your chance to network and learn more about and from each other. 

 

Ian Neville with his brilliant Breakfast Clubs,  Matt Cole at Crimsham Farm.  And some wonderful employers of veterans – Bottrills Transport - as well as representatives from the NHS, the Police, Firefighters  and Councils, all taking up the baton, and I thank you all for being here.

 

At the recent  Normandy D Day gathering the cut outs erected on the Normandy beach to mark this 80th year were made at the RBLI’s Aylesford factory, and it was at that event we saw clearly how few WW2 veterans now remain to be celebrated and it is those from the Falklands, Northern Ireland and more recent wars that now need our support. 

 

And Matt Mitchell, here from the RBLegion’s Care home Mais House in Bexhill, is getting ready to cater for younger men and women needing residential care. 

 

An essential part of today’s planning has come from Nick Ward the RBL’s Sussex County Support co-ordinator.   He’s a human dynamo when it comes to helping and understanding veterans’ welfare and mental needs and if you don’t know him now by the end of the next hour and a half I promise you, you will!

 

One final thought to leave you with, if there’s one thing I know as an actress it is that poetry and music sum up everything so well, and on D Day Tom Jones singing “I wont crumble with you, if you fall” movingly illustrated, not only how our veterans are trained to work together as a team but it also sums up what our responsibility to veterans is as signatories to the Armed Forces  Covenant – I wont crumble with you if you fall.

 

Debbie Lawson, a nurse from Stoke Mandeville Hospital, who’s been a  volunteer counsellor helping ex-service men and women suffering from PTSD, won a poetry competition with her poem based on the story of a member of a tank crew in Afghanistan who, when under attack, helped carry the bodies of his dead colleagues back to base. Since coming home and leaving the army regularly believes he sees his dead friends.

 

It’s called ONE FOR THE TEAM

 

I keep seeing you mate, intact and laughing,

holding up your baby to make us smile.

 

I keep hearing you mate, joking, urging, 'come on lads keep together, don't step on the cracks it brings bad luck’.

‘Keep it tight boys, we'll be home by the footy season’.

 

We carried you home, silent and broken, you really took one for the team that day.

 

Your dad stood with pride head high, don't cry, don't cry.

 

Lucy took the flag, a token for the broken. The baby will have it one day.

They'll go to the wall to see your name, a game, 'let's find daddy's name'

 

but I keep seeing you mate, my shrink says you're not there, that makes us laugh doesn't it?

 

What do they know.

 

LETS MAKE IT HAPPEN!

 

 

 

Jean Rogers 1st July 2024

 

Speech, excluding poetry quotes, © Copyright Jean Rogers 2024