Repatriation role honour for Lyneham chief (From Swindon Advertiser)

Repatriation role honour for Lyneham chief

1:00pm Tuesday 1st December 2009

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The station commander of RAF Lyneham in Wiltshire is to be presented with a civic award to thank him for his role in repatriation ceremonies.

Group Capt Mike Neville, pictured, who will be given the award by Wootton Bassett’s mayor, is also being recognised for improving RAF links with the town.

Last year Mr Neville organised a parade to thank people for continually showing their respects to fallen soldiers.

He hands over to a new station commander for RAF Lyneham in December. When the bodies of soldiers killed in Afghanistan started coming into RAF Lyneham in April 2007, there was no organised show of remembrance in Wootton Bassett.

At first there was just a handful of local British Legion members, standing on a street corner, bowing their heads as the cortege came past. Now hundreds of people gather to show their respects as the hearses slowly pass through the town on their way from the RAF base to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford.

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