Remembrance not celebration

From: R Frank Wilson, Butternab Road, Beaumont Park, Huddersfield.

YOUR correspondents are wrong when they suggest that David Cameron intends to spend 
£50m on “celebrating” the beginning of the First World War 
in 2014 (Yorkshire Post, October 24).

I can assure them that when I (and others) visit our local cemetery on Armistice Day every year there is nothing more sobering or so removed from celebration than to visit each grave, lay a poppy at the headstone and stand in contemplation of the awfulness of war and the sacrifices it demands.

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May I suggest that we might be less confused about the purpose of remembrance and commemoration if all of us were to visit our cemeteries from time to time and stand a while as we do.

When I met a rugby legend

From: Ron Farley, Croftway, Camblesforth, Selby.

Your article “Greatest All Black Captain Dies Aged 77” (Yorkshire Post, October 23), takes me back to the All Blacks UK tour in 1963/64.

I was stationed at RAF Leonard on the Helicopter Search 
and Rescue Squadron. I had been a rugby playing Physical Training Instructor but had to change trades after an accident but still “kept my hand in” by training teams and refereeing etc.

Although I had played other sports, rugby was my first love, so to speak.

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So, you can imagine my joy when I learned that the All 
Blacks were coming to 
Leconfield to stay and train 
for a few days prior to their 
match with Northern Counties at Otley!

It transpired that one of our officers on the station had been at school in New Zealand with Wilson Whineray and had arranged the whole thing.

Consequently, I have photographs I took of them training and one of me with their full-back, the great, the “boot” Don Clark!