Mike Simpson tells how feelings ran high on the day Birkenhead's memorial to the town's war dead finally was unveiled.

TWENTY thousand turned out one bright Sunday, July 5, 1925, with 2,000 seats reserved for those who had lost next-of-kin.

Despite the disagreements and struggles of the previous six years, the community embraced the chance to show respect and gratitude to a lost generation - private feelings over the relevance of the monument, and the reason for war notwithstanding.

Open dissent was not tolerated.

A man in the crowd who refused to remove his hat for the National Anthem was, reported the Liverpool Courier, "roughly handled by those about him." Feelings ran high.

The memorial was intended to be a substitute gravestone for local war dead, buried where they fell, and its unveiling a mass funeral.

The town’s civic, religious, social and military representatives were there to mourn with the families.

The mayor of that year, Mrs Mary Mercer, JP, laid the first wreath.

Next came the parents of the three Ashcroft brothers; the father of the three Kelly brothers and Mr Warnock, whose four brothers never came home.

The status of dignitaries enhanced the solemn power of the ceremony.

Originally, it was hoped the Prince of Wales might attend, but he was overseas and was replaced by the Commander-in-Chief of the Western Command, Sir RHK Butler.

The Lieutenant-Colonel was a prestigious catch, but some felt he and his entourage gave the proceedings an over-militaristic tinge at odds with the desired atmosphere of reconciliation.

Still, the day went well.

The Birkenhead Borough Silver Prize Band played selections, including Elgar’s ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ and Mozart’s ‘Kyrie and Gloria’ (12th Mass).

All present sang ‘O God Our Help in Ages Past’ with its lines: “Time like an ever-rolling stream bears all its sons away.

They fly, forgotten, as a dream dies at the opening day.”

Then General Butler tugged the cord, and the curtains parted to reveal Budden’s work.

The Last Post was played and the Bishop of Chester, Dr Paget, intoned a dedicatory prayer.

Immediately before and after the unveiling, an honour guard of sentries was mounted at the base of the gleaming, white memorial, representing Royal Navy, Army, RAF and Mercantile Marine.

An honour guard from the Cheshire Regiment attended, with band, the programme noted.

The Cheshires alone had raised or formed up six battalions in the town and links with the county regiment remain strong to this day.

A squadron from the Navy’s Atlantic Fleet, HMS Centaur and four destroyers, was stationed in the port and sent a detachment.

On the east side, the inscription "All these were honoured in their generations and were the glory of their times", and those 1,293 names, in Roman lettering, alphabetically listed without rank, decoration or regiment, united in the democracy of death.

The cenotaph was 28ft high, 18ft wide and 16ft deep.

The civic arms of the town were embossed on an oval escutcheon above the figurine panel of green Westmoreland stone.

It was a splendid sight.

Some may have argued that Birkenhead may never have got the memorial its populace wanted, but few disputed the town had emerged with the monument it deserved.

Budden and the executive committee - not forgetting the ordinary townsfolk who had paid for it - had done everyone proud.

Birkenhead had its memorial, and there it stands today.

Each Remembrance Sunday civic leaders return to remember the day the guns, the awful guns, fell silent: the eleventh hour of the eleventh day, in the eleventh month, 1918.

And its relevance 95 years on?

Among the names is that of Pete McNulty, who lived at 118 Oliver Street and died on a mounted charge on the Turkish trenches on March 5, 1917.

How a Birkenhead lad - McNulty was barely 21 - came to be a member of an elite cavalry regiment, the 13th Hussars, is perhaps another story.

But he died at Lajj, Mesopotamia -  modern day Iraq.

Substitute another soldier’s name and bring the date forward to 2013.

Replace Lajj with, say Basra, and perhaps reflect on those who died to ensure our freedom, and those still destined to do so.

Now that would be "right and fitting" - and surely relevant enough for anyone’s value system.