In honour of their sacrifice
Reporter: Richard Hooton
Date published: 12 May 2010
TWO Oldham families have been presented with the Elizabeth Cross in honour of relatives who died serving their country.
The Operations Recognition Award was created last year to provide national recognition for the families of Armed Forces personnel who have died on operations or as a result of an act of terrorism.
The Elizabeth Cross and Memorial Scroll are granted to the next of kin to acknowledge their loss and sacrifice.
Nine families from Greater Manchester were presented with the honour by the Queen’s representative, the Lord Lieutenant Warren Smith, at an emotional service at Manchester Cathedral.
They included Margaret (69) and Gordon Hurst (72), from Royton, whose son L/Cpl David Hurst was serving in the Royal Engineers in Northern Ireland when he was killed on October 6, 1981 at the age of 21.
He was being transferred from an Army base in Lisburn to another camp at Armagh in an unmarked van that collided with a petrol tanker.
The former Crompton House School pupil had always wanted to join the Army and had served for three-and-a-half years.
Mrs Hurst said: “We were devastated. You always think they are safe. It gets no easier over time.”
She backed the idea of honouring relatives, saying: “The medal is no compensation but it’s very nice. It was a really proud moment to be awarded it.
“It’s something that’s different, that you can keep and wear when it’s Remembrance Day.”
Cpl Jim Broadbent, from Greenacres, was killed by Chinese and Japanese communist rebels in an ambush on a tin mine he was defending while serving in the Manchester Regiment in Malaya on November 5, 1951.
He is commemorated in the regimental museum at Ashton Town Hall on a photograph and brass plaque.
The former Manchester Grammar School pupil enlisted for national service when he was 18 and served in Germany before being sent to Malaya.
He was only 19 when he was killed and is buried at the Western Road Christian Cemetery in Malaya.
His siblings Chris (69), from Watersheddings, Edith (72), from Denshaw, and Raymond (66), from Royton, were awarded the medal.
Chris Broadbent said: “I’m over the moon. We are enormously proud and it was a wonderful service. I think it’s a great idea. They are remembered nowadays much more.
“Jim was a very bright lad. He was soon to be made up to sergeant and would have been the only national service sergeant ever, which was quite a distinction.”
Seven of the families honoured were from the Army with one each from the RAF and Navy.
Servicemen were remembered from as long ago as 1948.
The Lord Lieutenant quoted the Queen in telling the relatives: “This seems to me to be a right and proper way of showing our enduring debt to those who are killed while actively protecting what is most dear to us all.
“The solemn dignity which we attach to the names of those who have fallen is deeply engrained in our national character.
“As a people, we accord this ultimate sacrifice the highest honour and respect.”
