John Short

Another one of our younger generation doing there bit for our veterans Well done son x

Legends x

Hundreds of London black cabs lined Westminster Bridge again today, waiting to take veterans home from the Cenotaph without charging a penny. The service, now called Cabs for Veterans after running for years as Poppy Cabs, began in 2009 with fifteen taxis parked on the bridge, marking the eleventh hour while they waited for veterans coming off the trains. The drivers had realised something nobody had thought much about: every London black cab is wheelchair accessible, and for a lot of veterans that is the difference between attending and staying at home. Seventeen years on it runs to over a thousand free journeys, most of them packed into about two hours either side of the service. Drivers meet veterans at the mainline stations, take them to Whitehall, then wait and take them back again. The whole thing is funded by the cabbies themselves, time, fuel and all, often with family and friends along to help. As one organiser put it, there is no more moving sight than standing on Westminster Bridge as Big Ben strikes eleven and seeing hundreds of black cabs lined up in silence.

The youngest British soldier of WW1 was just 12 years old. His name was Sidney Lewis, a boy from London who ran away from home in August 1915 without telling his parents. His parents had absolutely no idea where their young son had disappeared to, until a soldier back from the front lines on leave mentioned seeing him in France. Sidney easily tricked army recruiters who were more than happy to turn a blind eye to underage boys eager to fight. By the time he was 13, he was operating heavy machine guns in the 106th Machine Gun Company right in the thick of the Battle of the Somme. He survived six weeks of hell in the Battle of Delville Wood, enduring some of the most horrific casualties of the entire war. Desperate to save her child, his mother tracked down his military unit and sent a frantic letter to the War Office demanding his release, attaching his birth certificate as absolute proof. The army had no choice but to discharge him and send him home to his family. It wasn't until 2013 that historians and the Imperial War Museum officially authenticated his record, confirming that a 12 year-old boy truly braved the worst of the Great War. Lest we forget.

Thank you for your service Rip mate Sleep tight xx