Remembering the BSF

As is customary on the first Saturday after the anniversary of the Bulgarian armistice (30 September 1918), SCS members and friends gathered at the Cenotaph in Whitehall on Saturday 5 October to lay a wreath and remember the dead of the British Salonika Force.

As I walked to Whitehall across St James’s Park I was struck by the large police presence in the area. Was the Metropolitan Police expecting rowdiness from the SCS contingent? Actually, given the numbers present we could have been kept in order by an assertive traffic warden! No, the police presence was for a demonstration later in the day and our group was welcomed onto the Cenotaph’s garrisoned traffic island.

The Cenotaph in Whitehall with a strong police presence (photo by Vernon Creek).

The short act of remembrance was introduced by Society Chair, Alan Wakefield.

Alan Wakefield, Chair of the Salonika Campaign Society (photo by Robin Braysher).

The Society’s wreath was laid by the Hon. Ann Straker, the Society’s Patron.

The Hon. Ann Straker, the Society’s Patron, laying the poppy wreath (photo by Vernon Creek).

This was followed by the ‘exhortation’ and a two minute silence.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

After that, a very kind police officer took the following photograph of the SCS party. As you can see, the weather was good to us and the sun shone.

Photo of the SCS party in front of the Cenotaph, taken by an unknown police officer on Vernon Creek’s phone!

After this, the group made its way to Great Scotland Yard – admiring the police horses on the way – and the Civil Service Club, which was the venue for the Society’s social gathering, talk and annual meeting. The splendid talk was given by Colonel Nick Ilić on Elsie Inglis and the Scottish Women’s Hospitals for Foreign Service in Serbia during the Great War 1914-18.

Colonel Nick Ilić in full flow during his fascinating talk on the remarkable women of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals, and other medical groups, who did so much for Serbia and deserve to be better remembered (photo by Robin Braysher).

Sadly it was quite a depleted group who met – just twenty by my count, so down on past years – but it was good to meet familiar and new faces, learn something, maybe win a prize on the raffle and remember those who served, and especially those who died, in Macedonia during the Great War.

The Society’s poppy wreath (photo by Vernon Creek).