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from
Manchester Evening News Saturday 11 November 2000
Reaching
across the generations
BY SEB RAMSAY
PLAYTIME with a poppy bridges
the generation gap — although it will be a few years before five-month-old
Callum Holmes understands the meaning of the Remembrance Day symbol.
But for 101-year-old Great War
veteran Reuben Heywood, the memory of fallen comrades will always be strong.
The Wythenshawe old soldier was wounded In one of the last big battles on
the Western Front at Bapaume in France.
Shot through both legs by a sniper,
the then 18-year-old was picked up by the Americans before being taken back
home to see out the war in a Gloucestershire hospital.
"I was one of the lucky
ones," he said. "So many didn’t come back or wounded so badly it
changed their lives completely."
Reuben made a gruelling journey last
month to visit his former regiment museum and HQ In Brecon as the last
surviving veteran of the South Wales Borderers.
Armistice Day and Remembrance Day
events were being held this weekend throughout the region. Maroons to mark
the two-minute silence were fired at Manchester town hall this morning.
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