Old Carolians commemorate the past pupils of the School who gave their lives in the two World Wars.
At the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, one hundred years after the outbreak of World War One, a good turnout of Old Carolians met in the Woodfield School Hall for a service to commemorate those past pupils of the school that gave their lives in military combat. The service was conducted by Canon Paul Brothwell and was felt to be a successful and rewarding repeat of last year's inaugural occasion. Following prayers, the names of the fallen were read out by Old Carolian President Richard Woolley for the First World War and Senior Vice-President Ken Ryder for the Second World War. Also remembered were former Girls' High School Pupil Isobel Squires, who lost her life in the Second World War; Darryl Cope, who fell in the Falklands War; and Richard Brandon, who was killed in Afghanistan.
Colin Lloyd read out the words from the Kohima Memorial following that battle of 1944: 'When you go home, tell them of us and say, for their tomorrow, we gave our today'.
Richard placed a wreath at the memorial window, and the service concluded with the reading of several traditional passages including a couple from Harry Patch, who was the last survivor of the First World War soldiers, dying in 2009 at the age of 111. He pondered: 'Too many died. War isn't worth one life. All those young lives lost in a war which ended across a table. Where's the sense in that? Why didn't they settle it round a table in the first place?'
Canon Brothwell concluded: "May they rest in peace and rise in glory'.
Photographs were taken by Colin Hill, and one of them featured on the BBC 'Midlands Today' programme that same evening.
Norman Broadfield, Defence Correspondent