Royal British Legion members to represent Warwick at pilgrimage of remembrance event

The Royal British Legion event, known as Great Pilgrimage 90 (GP90), takes place between August 5 and August 9 and will be one of the largest in the charity’s history.

GP90 will mark 90 years since the original Royal British Legion Pilgrimage in 1928, which saw 11,000 World War One veterans and war widows visit the battlefields of the Somme in France and Ypres in Belgium, a decade after the conflict ended.

That Pilgrimage culminated in a march through Ypres to the Commonwealth War Grave Commission’s Menin Gate Memorial for a ceremony to commemorate the launch of The Hundred Days Offensive and in remembrance of those who never returned.

Local Legion members, Ashley Garrison-Brown and Anthony Glover will represent the Warwick Branch of the Royal British Legion at the event, as Standard Bearer and wreath layer respectively.

They will join more than 2,200 other Legion representatives and dignitaries, including civic and military guests from the UK, Commonwealth and northern Europe who are taking part.

Mr Garrison-Brown and Mr Glover will tour some of the same battlefields and cemeteries visited by those on the 1928 Pilgrimage, before marching along the original route through Ypres, to the Menin Gate on August 8, bearing their branch standard and a wreath.

Mr Glover, Chairman of the Warwick Branch of The Royal British Legion, said: “Great Pilgrimage 90 is a unique opportunity for the Legion community to come together and bear our Standards along the same route in Ypres taken 90 years earlier by the veterans and widows of the First World War.”