Prince of Wales commemorates Remembrance Sunday in India

The duchess "was very taken by the fact of how young he was. She was very
moved," said David Moore, deputy head of mission at the British High
commission in Mumbai who guided her to the grave.

Prince Charles remarked on the sacrifice of Kirkee's eldest soldier, Private
Sydney Frankcom, who died in December 1944 at the age of 68. He had arrived
in India in 1941 and fought with the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Berkshire
Regiment - in which the Duke of Edinburgh serves as Colonel in Chief - in
the ferocious Burma campaign. The Prince was "particularly moved" by Pte
Frankcom's sacrifice and his place as "the oldest soldier buried in the
cemetery," said Lieutenant Colonel Simon Colyer, military advisor at the
British High Commission in New Delhi, who accompanied the Prince at the
cemetery.

"I was showing him [graves of] soldiers from regiments he was associated
with," he added.

He had lingered at the grave of Matron Rhoda McMeekin, a nurse about whom
little is known. Lt. Col Colyer lamented poor British record keeping of the
circumstances of its war dead compared to other Commonwealth nations like
New Zealand.

The Prince also paid his respects at the grave of Flying Officer Frederick
Evers-Swindell of the Royal New Zealand Air Force who crashed the Hurricane
he was piloting into a sea wall during a training exercise in preparation
for attacks in Burma. His plane stalled at 800 feet as it was 'attacking'
artillery positions. He was buried in Sewri, near Bombay, before his
neglected grave was moved to Kirkee.

As a British military advisor read the Ode of Remembrance from Robert Binyon's
For the Fallen, the Prince of Wales laid a wreath of paper flowers with the
message: "In grateful remembrance of your service and sacrifice, Charles."

Earlier the royal couple met some of India's last surviving Second World War
veterans when they joined the congregation of Mumbai's 'Afghan church' - St
John the Evangelist Church which was built to commemorate the soldiers who
died in Britain's mid 19th Century Afghan War.

The congregation included Brigadier Furdoon Mehta, 91, the first Indian Army
pilot, and Madhukar Dongre, 92, who won the Burma Star medal for serving
with the Indian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers.

More than 35,000 of the 2.5 million Indians who fought with British forces
lost their lives during the Second World War in battles throughout North
Africa, Europe, Burma and Indonesia. Its troops won 38 Victoria and George
Crosses for their valour.

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