THE residents of Bury did not disappoint when they answered the annual call to turn out to honour those who lost their lives in war.

An estimated 2,000 people, of all ages, lined the streets or marched with pride during Bury's main Remembrance Parade in this, the 60th anniversary year of the end of the Second World War.

As in previous years, the parade was split into three sections, with the serving Territorial Army soldiers and the ex-service and pre-service military organisations taking pride of place at the head of the parade procession. The Fusiliers' Association (Lancashire) Band and Corps of Drums ensured the rank and file kept in step.

Youth group organisations, including the army, air training corpse and sea cadets, followed while the emergency services and the Mayor of Bury and other civic leaders brought up the rear.

At precisely 11am, buglers sounded the Last Post to mark the start of a two minutes' silence, followed by the laying of wreaths at the cenotaph.

In Bury Parish Church it was standing room only as the Rector of Bury, Reverend Dr John Findon conducted the Remembrance Service.

His sermon, Dr Findon spoke of the ordinary young men who willingly enlisted to fight for peace.

He said: "Those of you who read the Bury Times will have seen a moving account of the victorious Hawkshaw football team of 1913-14, and of the losses that they suffered after War began. Just eleven young men, from one little corner of England.

"Once you begin to extrapolate from stories like that, and to grasp the national scale of it all, it is overwhelming. Who can stand in one of those cemeteries in northern France and not be overwhelmed?

"And somehow the uniformity, each grave identical to the last apart from the name, makes it worse. Because identical is precisely what these men were not: each one had his own talents, his own sense of humour, his own life; in each case there was a family, or a girlfriend, perhaps a wife and children, who share in the loss. Each stone speaks of its own unique tragedy.

"And it was not only the scale. Previous wars had been fought, by and large, by soldiers and sailors who had chosen military life. Suddenly, after 1914, young men were volunteering, or being called up, with no instinct or aptitude for fighting, and finding themselves in the front line, witnessing events that nobody ought ever to have to witness.

"There was a terrible innocence, even naivety, about what was involved in fighting a war, among those young fellow townsmen of ours, from their ordinary backgrounds.

"But beyond that, there was the sense of powerlessness, of being caught up in something that nobody could understand, and that nobody could control. Nobody really knew just how or why the First World War had started, certainly nobody knew how to stop it. And while in some ways the issues in 1939-45 were clearer, there was still that powerful sense of being caught up willy nilly in a terrible maelstrom which was outside anybody's control.

"It is 60 years since the end of the Second World War. For only one of those years have British forces not been on active service somewhere in the world. Ninety-seven service personnel have died in Iraq. We need no reminding of the emergence of a vicious brand of international terrorism, that is apparently willing to shed any amount of innocent blood in the name of a perversion of Islam.

"But there have been real gains. The nations of the world are not so inclined to resort to war today as they were in 1914 and 1939. The community of the nations has found a voice, in the UN, that is at least capable of commanding respect. No nation that cared about the respect of others could today simply trample on the rights of its neighbours, as the Kaiser or Hitler or Stalin or Saddam Hussein did.

"No nation that care about the respect of others could ignore today the desperate needs of the world's poor, or the scandal of millions of deaths from curable diseases, or the necessity of preserving a habitable planet for future generations to enjoy. Their efforts may often be bungling, half-hearted, or even dishonest, but nobody today is going publicly to deny the principle of the infinite and equal value of all human lives. You cannot treat human beings as a disposable mass; they are unique, and infinitely precious.

"If the experience of two world wars has imprinted that on the world's consciousness, then those whom we remember today did not died in vain."

Elsewhere in the borough, the children of today led the tributes to the servicemen of yesterday at All Saints Church, Stand, in Whitefield.

Members of the 5th Whitefield Guides conducted the remembrance service focusing on the Japanese War, in which thousands of Allied troops suffered at the hands of their captors.

Following the service, the congregation made their way to the cenotaph in Higher Lane for an act of remembrance led by the Rector of All Saints, Rev Alison Hardy.

At Radcliffe, young adults and children proudly wore medals and parts of the uniform of older relatives to carry on the family tradition of Remembrance Day.

Hundreds of residents of the town lined both Water Street and Blackburn Street in Radcliffe to watch the old soldiers and young uniformed groups parade from the Royal British Legion to the war memorial.

The parade was led by Radcliffe Brass Band followed by a number of Radcliffe's uniformed groups, including the Air Cadets, St John Ambulance and scouting groups.

Army cadets from Radcliffe were missing from the Radcliffe event, but only because they were taking part in Sunday's televised Remembrance Parade in London.

The standards were lowered at the war memorial while bugler Martin Peters played the Last Post before the two-minute silence was solemnly observed.

In Prestwich, a service at St Hilda's Church was followed by march from the Royal British Legion in Bury Old Road to the cenotaph in St Mary's Road for an act of remembrance.

In Unsworth, wreaths were laid at Unsworth Pole in Parr Lane following a service at St George's Church.