UNFORTUNATELY, your correspondent John Bowman (Letters July 27, ‘Offended by letter’) not only misses the point of my letter (Letters July 13, ‘Memorial move’) but attributes views to me that I did not express with the result that anybody who read his letter but not mine would be completely misled.
Well, he can read my letter again, but, to put the record straight for him and anybody else who hadn’t, the points I am raising are:— Firstly, I was talking about the Andover war memorial, not the generality of memorials.
As such it is a public, not a private thing, which should therefore be located as originally intended and, as can be seen elsewhere across the UK, in a prominent public place where it can be seen as a matter of course. Churchyards and cemeteries are for the burial of the dead and not places of public pilgrimage.
Secondly, my point is that its original location is ideal to fulfil the above requirement so that is where it should be notwithstanding any indignities of the type mentioned (which were put forward, in part, to supposedly justify its removal to the present location) and which, I have no doubt, it can easily survive. To suggest, as John Bowman did, that I approve of the desecration of memorials is ridiculous.
Michael Wood, Dronfield, Derbyshire.
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