MIKE HILL: In praise of the heroes of today and yesteryear

Some spectacular events scheduled for the bank holiday in Church Square and at the Heugh Gun Battery Museum have all gone by the wayside because of the Coronavirous lock down. It’s a difficult time for all of us, but for those who survived the Second World War, in Great Britain, in Russia, the USA and 24 more allied countries who fought the Nazis, and who actually experienced the emotional turmoil and sheer utter relief that was the original VE Day following a conflict that cost the lives of an estimated million combatants and civilians across Europe and the globe, like Captain Tom Moore who turned 100 last week and our own recent centenarian, James Lindsay of Stitchell House Care Home in Greatham, who turned 100 on May Day this , it must be all the more poignant.

They witnessed first hand the devastation of what must have felt like global Armageddon. Each man and woman on the frontline, those working the land to keep the nation fed, those working in the Durham Coal fields (including the Bevan Boys) to fuel the nation and our armed forces, transport workers who’s trains were the targets of bombers and the women working in the munitions factories, the firefighters and those members of the Home Defence, many of whom would have seen active service in the First World War, would have actually took a sharp intake of breath 75 years ago and thanked their lucky stars. It truly is a moment they, or anyone else I’m sure, wouldn’t wish upon others, but it was also a moment of reckoning.

Thanks to their generation, those who witnessed the most horrendous conflict in modern times, the families of the 70 people killed in the Hartlepools during German air raids between 1940 and 1943, the relatives of the first British Civil Defence Worker killed on British soil , John Punton aged 54 who died in West Hartlepool on 19th June 1940, we not only defeated Nazism, but we rebuilt the nation state and created homes for heroes. More importantly, the post war Labour Government of the day created our National Health Service; born on 5th July 1948.

And it is that very NHS which forms the frontline today in the fight against the COVID - 19 pandemic. I realise that barely a corner of my constituency has remained untouched; from Elwick and Dalton Piercy, from Greatham and the Fens, from Hart to the Headland, from Seaton to the Central Estate and Owton Manor, we have all witnessed the touch of this deadly virus, but our NHS workers are getting us through this crisis and I am so proud that many of those workers, literally saving lives at the University Hospital of North Tees, are from Hartlepool. Their skill and expertise, their compassion and dedication, is making a real difference and keeping us safe and looked after. I know that those who went through the hell of the 1939 to 1945 war would agree that while they faced down the most fiercest of enemies back in the day, their legacy, the NHS, is of greater priority right now than buntings, parties and RAF flypasts.

Stay at home, keep safe, protect the NHS.