Today was a special day. Whitehall. Marching past the Cenotaph with the Polish Contingent was a moment -more than a moment actually- of great privilege, and pride, and pleasurable emotion.

This was the third year I’d been invited to march but the first year I wore all my father’s medals. Today was the first time I felt a real connection to him and his wartime experiences. Not for lack of trying on his part. He took me to Italy when I was fifteen and showed me all the battlefields and cemeteries where he had fought and his friends had been killed. I was stupid and lacked any empathy. I sulked throughout the three weeks, only perking up when we went to visit a wartime girlfriend who pretended to remember him. She lived in the magnificent Casa de Branca D’ Oro D’Este. I was impressed.

Only now, today, almost sixty years later, do I feel that I really understand what he went through and how it affected him for the rest of his life.

And so I was proud to wear his medals, to feel close to him in a way I never could before. Watching the ten thousand people marching today, being part of something so big, so important, so solemn yet in many ways so very jolly, provided a sense of camaraderie and kinship that I have rarely experienced, and certainly never in a crowd.

It was gratifying to see so many people watching and clapping everyone as we marched past. Our contingent was made up of members and friends of The Polish Heritage Society, with groups from the Isle of Wight, Huddersfield, and Southampton. One woman had come all the way from Ghent in Belgium to honour her father. There were children and grandchildren of veterans of the Second Polish Corps (General Anders) and the First Polish Armoured Division (General Maczek).

Sadly a commemorative event such as this does not prevent further conflicts. We celebrate the ends of wars while preparing for future ones. We look around the world today and see the horrors that people are going through now. When I think of all that my father went through- for your freedom and ours – actually it doesn’t bear thinking about!

Luckily my son was with me again today and his presence helped to process all my emotions.

But I am proud and privileged to be living in a country that has not been subjugated, where there is still freedom of speech and thought, where peace is the norm, and there is an understanding of law and justice. And that is no small thanks to my father and his colleagues both contemporary and future. They believed in what they fought for and I believe that is what kept them going during the hardest of times.