VICTORY FOR OUR HEROES

MoD to pay overseas commemoration costs so fallen comrades can be honoured

- BY GILES SHELDRICK Chief Reporter

SECOND World War heroes have won a stunning Remembrance Sunday victory - securing guaranteed funding for all future commemorative trips.

Ahead of the most significant day of the year for our armed forces, veterans from the greatest generation have been given a "cast-iron" Ministry of Defence promise that their costs will be covered when they pay their respects abroad.

In a victory for the Express, which campaigned on this issue, the giants from the 1939-45 conflict will now be able to honour their comrades until they are no longer able to do so.

Dorothea Barron, 101, left, who joined the Women’s Royal Naval Service in 1943 and taught semaphore to soldiers ahead of the D-Day landings, said: “At my age, people often ask why I still make the journey to Normandy and the Netherlands.

“But it’s not about me - it’s about them, the ones who never came home. It gives us the chance to stand together, to honour our friends where they fell and to say, 'You are not forgotten'.

“Today, on Remembrance Sunday, I feel it more deeply than ever. We don’t go to the continent to remember war, we go to remember the peace they gave us and to make sure their names live on in the hearts of the next generation.

The King today leads the nation in honouring our war dead during the annual Remembrance Sunday service at the Cenotaph.

Joining the parade of veterans through Whitehall in Central London will be former Royal Marine Jim Grant and Mervyn Kersh, who fought with the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, both 100, and Royal Navy hero Henry Rice, 99.