We were among a few who went down to the Falklands Yomper on Armistice Day at the 11th hour to pay our respects, and who took the short walk to the memorial garden in the grounds of the former Royal Marines barracks and museum. It’s good to have it regularly confirmed in the cold light of day that the Yomper is still in place - and that the plan to relocate him from his position atop his mound overlooking the Solent remains mercifully shelved - at least for now.
Read moreThe Last Dambuster - Landmark, Landscape and Memory at Norton Disney, Lincs
George ‘Johnny’ Johnson, Pride of Britain Awards (Photo: Steve Bainbridge / Daily Mirror; reprinted by LincolnshireLive). Updated: Johnny Johnson passed away in his sleep in December 2022, aged 101.
When the last surviving Dambuster, 98 year old George ‘Johnny’ Johnson, turned over a spadeful of earth at last year’s ground breaking ceremony at Norton Disney in Lincolnshire, he inaugurated the long-awaited construction of a major landmark sculpture of a Lancaster bomber. ‘Johnny’ Johnson, who among other honours and awards has an MBE for services to Second World War remembrance and the community, including his outstanding work on mental health rehabilitation, imprinted a little of himself in that Lincolnshire landscape’s layers of memory. He was a link between past and present, and linked the landmark to the future perceptions and narratives of the Lancaster aircrews.
Read more'Our Boy' - An Act of Remembrance in a Landscape of the Fallen, East Jerusalem
Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery, East Jerusalem
On teenage George West’s tombstone his parents, a world away from Jerusalem sitting grieving in Glasgow, had two words inscribed. And with their simple plain words, Mr and Mrs West told those generals and the state: he doesn’t belong to you any more. He’s Our Boy.
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