Growing Together To Be Our Best
Millie went into the centre of Cardiff on 27 June 2009 to learn about the first ever national Armed Forces Day. This was a special national event to honour our Service men and women – past, present and future – .
As the school is 107 years old you can imagine that many of its pupils and staff have served in the armed forces. In fact the opening speech speaks of how the children 'would be taught to fight their own battles and the battles of the Empire'. Whilst it would be very wrong to blindly glamorise war and the military (partly because it lessens the real sacrifice made by so many of our men and women) it is even worse to ignore our own rich history and ignore the work of the Armed Forces.
For the last three years, the 27 June has been known as Veterans Day. There was a bit of confusion with the Arerican version and a lot of people thought this was duplicating a lot of what goes on at Remembrance Day and it would be nice to also celebrate the men and women still serving in our Armed Forces (both regular and reserve force), as well as cadets. Last year a report entitled National Recognition of the Armed Forces, decided to set up this Armed Forced day and it proved very popular. Next year Cardiff will host the main celebrations for all of Great Britain.
Obviously all the work that the community did on the schools history including the war years together with the childrens work have been lost while the school service and Cardiff Council's IT department sort out thier problems. You can see when Captain Randall visited us and toldus about life in the Royal Marines. Iuean visited us to tell us about his life as a sailor in the Royal Navy and about ships. there is some details on the schools history on this Remembrance day Page and the launch of theRemembrance Day stamps at Cardiff castle's Welsh Regiment Museum at the beginning of the year.
We have a local Air Force cadets (aged13-17) here in Ely which has been popular with many ex-pupils. Cardiff Sea Cadets (Junior Cadets are aged 10 to 11) and Army Cadets(12 -18). HMS CAMBRIA is the local Royal Naval Reserve Unit at Sully. There are several nearby TA units including Signals, Medical, Engineering, Inteligence & Artillery