ROYAL British legion representatives from across Oxfordshire have returned from a pilgrimage to Belgium, which marked 90 years since the organisation’s first ever commemoration.

‘Great Pilgrimage 90’ involved a day of parades and two days of battlefield tours, before a wreath-laying service.

Representatives were sent from various branches across the county as thousands flocked to Ypres, Belgium, to remember fallen soldiers.

The pilgrimage of remembrance culminated in a ceremony at the Menin Gate Memorial, as part of this year’s centenary commemorations of the First World War.

The event is thought to have been one of the largest in the charity’s history.

‘GP90’ marks 90 years since the original Royal British Legion Pilgrimage in 1928, which saw 11,000 World War One veterans and war widows visit the battlefields of the Somme, in France, and Ypres in Belgium, a decade after the conflict had ended.

This year’s representatives toured some of the same battlefields and cemeteries visited by those on the 1928 Pilgrimage, before marching along the original route through Ypres to the Menin Gate, bearing branch standards and a wreath.

They joined more than 2,200 other Legion representatives and dignitaries, including civic and military guests from the UK, the Commonwealth and Northern Europe.

Wantage representative David Drew said: “I felt proud to have been a part of the commemoration but also humble to have marched in the footsteps of so many who had fought for their King, country and future generations.

“What an amazing event. Most of the organisation worked incredibly well and it was a real privilege to attend."

The former RAF officer, 71, continued: “The view up and down the road from the station to the town centre – which more than a million men from the UK and the empire would have used – gave me a real sense of history and pride.

“James Webster (Mr Drew’s 19-year-old accomplice from Wantage) did well and was blown away by the event – definitely a memory for life.”

The pair laid one of a reported 11,000 wreaths.

Thousands of British members of the charity marched the two mile route to the gate, which is dedicated to fallen soldiers, while there was also military music and various ceremonial displays.

Major Jim Sibbald, the chairman of the Wantage branch of The Royal British Legion, said: “Great Pilgrimage 90 was a unique opportunity for the Legion community to come together and bear our standards along the same route in Ypres taken 90 years earlier by the veterans and widows of the First World War.”

Faringdon standard bearer Thomas Henry Scrivens added: "To actually go out on to those battlefields and see for ourselves what had happened, it was amazing - absolutely incredible to think that those young men had gone over the trenches just to be mown down in their thousands. 

"The work that the commonwealth war graves commission have done on the cemetries - a lot unnamed graves - and memorials; the quality of that work is second to none and they will be standing for years. That really took my eye.

"It's also been very dry and yet the poppies are still growing out there, that's something else that took my eye. That was poignant."