It doesn’t seem as though a year has passed since this column featured Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday.

We reflected that some 880,000 servicemen from the United Kingdom died in World War 1 as well as a further 200,000 from other countries of the British Empire and Commonwealth.

In World War II 400,000 British servicemen lost their lives.

Whilst you read this article our Government is seeking out ways to reduce Defence expenditure. Not in the sensible fashion of culling the inordinate gaggle of incompetents in the Ministry of Defence Procurement Department, who I wouldn’t trust to buy a box of paperclips never mind an aircraft carrier or a Typhoon jet fighter, but by hitting our servicemen on the frontline.

It is noteworthy that the nearest most of our Sir Humphrey Appleby lookalikes have ever got to front line action is a days shooting on the grouse moors, so they will not be big on empathy for the troops.

‘Our service people will always get all the personnel, equipment and support they require’ the politicians cry, whilst quietly adding under their breath, ‘providing that it meets our new budget.’

Soldiers don’t get to choose their wars; the politicians do that. Tommy just gets to fight them. T’was ever thus.

More recently we have seen our forces in an unpopular conflict in Iraq where they were ultimately not welcome and suffered severe consequences resulting in 179 deaths since the invasion in 2003.

Now we find our servicemen and women in Afghanistan facing a very dangerous situation.

The British casualty rate in Afghanistan since 2001 is frightening. Let’s have a closer at the UK’s contribution to the Afghan war in numbers.

There are 9,500 British troops stationed in Afghanistan.

335 British soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan to date. Of these, 108 soldiers were killed in 2009.

Just one British servicewoman has been killed, Corporal Sarah Bryant.

There have been 388 seriously injured or wounded casualties since October 2001 to summer 2010.

The average age of a British casualty is 22 years.

On television we watch the parades of hearses pass through the Wiltshire town of Wootton Bassett as they ferry our military fallen from RAF Lyneham. The roadside is filled with crowds of mourners who salute respectfully and lay flowers for our dead.

But what of the casualties who survived?

A military casualty is not a like a scrap in the playground; it often results in the loss of at least one limb with crippling debilitating consequences for the rest of their lives.
In 1922 Major George Howson founded the Royal British Legion Poppy Factory in the Old Kent Road so that poppies could be made to give some form of employment to those disabled from the Great War of 1914 -1918.
Remembrance Sunday is on 14th November and very soon the famous red poppies will be on sale throughout the country. So drop your coins in the collection tin and wear your poppy with pride. Do it for the memory of all of those fallen in conflicts throughout the world who laid down their lives throughout the years so our country can be free.
But more importantly, it helps the Royal British Legion carry on with its excellent work of helping those dreadfully maimed and psychologically scarred ex-servicemen and their families who are trying to rebuild their lives.
And with the Afghanistan casualty list growing longer by the day the RBL need all the help they can get.

‘They shall not grow old as we grow old.’