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On parade to mark 259 years of service




A colour party from 3rd Battalion, Royal Anglian Regiment led the parade
A colour party from 3rd Battalion, Royal Anglian Regiment led the parade

Wearing red and yellow roses, veterans of the Suffolk Regiment returned to Gibraltar Barracks on Sunday for the annual Minden Day Parade.

The parade is held on the nearest Sunday to August 1, the day in 1759 on which their forebears were among six British regiments who defeated 10,000 French cavalry at the Battle of Minden.

Members of what was then called the X11th Regiment of Foot, picked roses and put them in their hats on the way to the battle.

Following a church service in a marquee on what is now part of West Suffolk College carpark, but was the Suffolk's parade ground, about 90 veterans were led in a parade by a colour party from 3rd Battalion Royal Anglian Regiment (RAR).

Col Philip Cox, RAR's area secretary, said the successors to the Suffolk Regiment are B Company, 1st Battalion, RAR, but as they are soon off to Afghanistan, the 3rd Battalion stood in for them.

Among the veterans taking part was 101-year-old Major Ken Mayhew who won the Military Cross for his gallantry on D-Day and fought with the regiment as far as Holland.

He is one of only four living recipients of the Netherlands Ridder (Knight) Militaire Willems-Orde and that country's embassy hosted a 100th birthday party for him last year.

  • More of Mark Westley's pictures in Friday's Bury Free Press