Context 161 - September 2019

C O N T E X T 1 6 1 : S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 9 53 shame, the degrading ditch and a wailing wall for draft dodgers’. Since then this memorial has proved to be an iconic focus for the nation, with relatives gaining much comfort in seeing and feeling the inscribed names of their loved ones on a wall that is deliberately low-key in its design. The repatriation of the fallen first started after the Falkland War in 1982, with relatives of those killed being given the option of the bodies being repatriated or having them buried in the Falkland Islands.The majority chose the former, with 64 bodies being repatriated and only 15 buried in the Falkland Islands. Remembrance can not be taken for granted, particularly as time passes and people forget the sacrifice made by previous generations. In 1970, when the Stock Exchange premises was demolished, its war memorial, which com- memorated over 600 employees who fell in the Boer War and the first and second world wars was removed and placed into storage at a stone-masons yard in London. Since then the Stock Exchange has moved a number of times and clearly its new home at Paternoster Square could not accommodate the original memorial. Knowing my interest in war memorials, a lady in Leicestershire approached me in 2014 to help her in lobbying for its restoration. Three years later, after much correspondence and many meetings, it was a privilege to be at the unveiling of the new memorial, which was unveiled on 14 November 2017. Whether a war memorial is just a board recording the names of the fallen or as grand as the Thiepval Memorial, it conveys the same message that young people left their communities never to return. An inscription on a war memorial in America conveys this powerful message of the sacrifice so many have made in war: ‘we were young, we have died, remember us’. The Thiepval Memorial commemorates over 72,000 missing from the Somme. Jeremy Prescott served in the regular army for 26 years, seeing operational service in Northern Ireland and Oman, and reaching the rank of lieutenant colonel. After the London Stock Exchange premises were demolished in 1970, the war memorial lay in storage until it was recreated in 2017.