Editorial: Paying tribute to those who served the UK in conflict

​​To be a veteran of World War Two you now need to be aged almost 99.

Only someone born on or before the very start of 1927 would have been old enough to reach the minimum then British service age of 18 in time to see action. After several months training the youngest of that cohort would have reached the front line in early 1945, shortly before war ended in Europe, then months later in Japan.

Witnesses to the world wars are dwindling in number, let alone combatants (you have to be aged 85 to have a meaningful memory of WW2). Yet Remembrance Sunday, yesterday, and Remembrance Day, tomorrow, are not hugely diminished in significance from the immediate postwar years (the former is now observed much more than the latter).

One reason that these commemorations still resonate is that many people have an instinctive sense that their lives today are immeasurably more comfortable than those of most of the population a century or so ago, let alone than of those who fought for our freedom. Another is that hundreds of thousands of Britons have served in more recent military operations, not least in Northern Ireland.

A further reason is that ideologies such as extreme Islamism have grown markedly in the UK in recent decades, making the majority of the population more protective of traditions that the fanatical minority loathes.

As we report in this newspaper, people turned out yesterday at locations across NI, and the rest of the UK, to pay tribute to those who wore uniform for their country in conflict, particularly to remember those who were maimed in action and above all those who paid the ultimate sacrifice.

There is a long and proud tradition in the province of noble service in the British military, as well as in the wider intelligence and logistics and support organisations that are vital for the defence of the realm.