A TAMESIDE school paid tribute to one of its own as the area fell silent to remember the fallen.
Mossley Hollins High School held a remembrance service as Corporal Joseph Etchells of 2nd Battalion of The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers was close to people’s hearts.
Representatives from the establishment the 22-year-old attended and the area he called home gathered around a memorial tree planted in his honour on Armistice Day, Tuesday, November 11.
Cpl Etchells became the 186th serviceman to be killed in Afghanistan on July 19, 2009, and as speakers told how: “He never forgot where he came from.”
Among those laying wreaths were Max Buckley, on behalf f the army, Dave Jones of Mossley Town Council, local PSCO Karl Lisic, head boy Liam Woolfenden and head girl Thea Smith-Heeley.
An amazing story from World War II was also told of as Christine Lyness attended, proudly wearing both her MBE insignia and father Harry Brown’s war medals.
As it turned out, the Flying Officer Navigator, who worked on Lancaster Bombers, has a remarkable tale attached to him.
After not having enough fuel to return from one mission, his plane came down in northern France.
There he was taken in by the Mayor of the town of Arass and escaped the gestapo when they arrived.
He walked over the Pyrenees to Spain and then eventually made his way to Gibraltar, from where he had returned home.
When back, he found he had been missing presumed dead for six months – but the legacy of help from the French resistance lives on.
For he vowed that if he had a daughter, the woman called Christianne would be honoured.
And so, Christine Anne Lyness MBE is now one oof Mossley’s most familiar figures.
She stood alongside representatives of Mossley Town Council, police, fire service and Mossley Town Team as Cpl Etchells’ memorial was the centre point.
Pupils gathered and paraded in uniforms of the army, Scouts and other organisations they are part of.
The school’s brass band performed, and a two-minute silence and playing of The Last Post was impeccably observed after pupils, including Oliver Barlow, Grace Hynes and Henry Whitbread, read passages including In Flanders Fields.
Head Andrea Din closed the ceremony by reading Laurence Binyon’s poem For The Fallen.