New Year's Honours: Devoted and long-serving NI pair recognised

Norman Espie, a member of the legion for almost four decades, was awarded a BEM for services to ceremonial duties and remembrance.

The Cookstown man has regularly been chosen to bear the standard at the organisation’s flagship remembrance service in London.

He also had the privilege of heading up some 1,100 standard bearers who took part in the Great Pilgrimage at Menin Gate, Ypres in August.

Speaking to the News Letter, Mr Espie said he was “surprised and honoured” by the recognition.

In two years he will celebrate 40 years membership of the RBL, though it was only in 2007 that he started his training to be a standard bearer.

His duties also involved taking part in several pilgrimages in which he took family members of war veterans to see the battle fields where their ancestors fought during World War One; other tours also included the World War Two D-Day Landing.

“It has been the experience of a lifetime,” said the 56-year-old, who will retire as national standard bearer in May 2019.

Meanwhile, Banbridge man Mervyn Herron has said he is “over the moon” after being awarded an MBE for services to the Royal Scottish Pipe Band Association (RSPBA) Northern Ireland.

The 67-year-old first joined the ranks back in the early 1980s and devoted over 30 years to the organisation before his retirement in 2016, and during that time he worked tirelessly in the planning and execution of pipe band competitions in NI and further afield.

Recounting how he first became involved in the RSPBA – an organisation that would come to dominate a large part of his life – Mr Herron added: “I sort of fell into it. I had been in a local band and was approached to take on a secretarial role in the association locally in Co Down.

“I told them I couldn’t do it long term due to my work commitments – I ended up doing 33 years.”

Thankfully Mr Herron quickly fell in love with the role and described it as “an addiction”.

“Once you got into it you couldn’t picture doing anything else,” he added.

An RSPBA director until he was voted out of the post in 2015, Mr Herron resigned as the NI branch’s Contest Committee Chairman in 2016.

“It was a hard decision to make and I miss it every day,” he concluded.