I have just come across this recording of Last Post being sounded and it brought back a very moving memory.
I must point out that I am not, and never was a military man. I tolerated my National Service because I had no option, but, as my writings here show, it provided me with a wealth of memories, some good and some, frankly unpleasant.
I quite often found myself parading at the main gate late in the evening. This was sometimes because I was part of the Battalion Headquarter Guard, sometimes because I was on one of the picquets, but most often because I was on ‘jankers’. Of this last I probably did more than my fair share, but I have no real complaint about this because, on reflection I was a bit stupid and slow to realise that I could not beat the system.
The memory to which I referred, though, was of standing to attention at the main gate in Minden, whilst the bugler sounded ‘Last Post’. This is a moving experience at any time, as I have just discovered when listening to the file highlighted above. On a bitterly cold, still and frosty night in North West Germany in the 1950s, those notes ringing out made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. What surprised me and left a lasting impression, however, was that German men walking past outside the barracks always stopped and stood to attention until the last notes died away, when they would carry on with their lives. What memories must have stirred in the hearts and minds of some of those men!