This is one that will depend on your area but broadly yes, Brownies, Guides, Rangers and adults do go to Remembrance Parade and they go in their uniform, all smart and wearing a poppy. If you’re a village unit and your village doesn’t have a parade or service, your nearest town will and the best thing to do is find out from existing leaders what your district does. Exactly how it works will vary from parade to parade but let me try to explain the common things.
What do you wear?
Smart means uniform top, sometimes with neckerchiefs if your unit wears them. Rainbows and Brownies have uniform bottoms so they wear those. Guides have an option uniform skirt, otherwise they wear smart black, navy or grey trousers or skirts – school uniform is ideal. No denim, no leggings. Rangers and adults have no uniform bottoms at all so they wear something smart. Everyone wears black shoes, or at least dark smart ones. No trainers. Again, school shoes. No coats – the veterans parade in their suits and medals and if they can manage without a coat, so can we. As for the Scouts, their smart uniform is just a shirt! In my last district, we decided that the softshell was the smartest of the adult uniform options, so it was requested that we wore that.
We did have a catastrophe back in either 2018 or 2019. Girlguiding had discontinued the Senior Section uniform because it was getting rid of the Senior Section umbrella. I think they’d decided by that point that the new 14-18 section would be named Rangers – after going through about 20 options, the overall consensus was “we don’t want to change the name or the colours, really”. But the new uniform hadn’t even been designed, let alone put on sale. By mid-September, Ranger leaders all over the country were starting to panic. What do the older girls wear to Remembrance Parade?? There isn’t a whole lot of second-hand Senior Section uniform floating around and most of them were just plain too big to wear their old Guide uniform.
So what pretty much all of us did was either have custom hoodies printed (the expensive option!) or go to Primark and buy a load of matching hoodies. I opted for the Primark route: I bought five bottle green hoodies and I sewed a Ranger trefoil badge on the front and a Girlguiding logo on the sleeve. Everyone at parade adored it and I was asked so many times “Is that the new Ranger uniform? Ooh, it’s better than the old one!” and I had to explain over and over again that it was improvised for the occasion. I sat at home that afternoon and looked through the Ranger leaders Facebook group at all the other improvised uniforms, all in the blue-green-grey-black end of the spectrum. We all looked lovely but it’s a good thing we were all kept separate!
A cautionary tale: I once asked my Guides right back in September to remember the uniform code for Remembrance Parade and we had one girl who complained for two solid months that she couldn’t wear her school uniform and her shoes hurt and she whinged and whined until I was ready to chuck her out. Her little sister kept her mouth shut. On the day, big sister turned up smart and perfect (we made her flagbearer). Little sister turned up in purple leggings and brown fluffy boots.
Where do the wreaths come from?
In my district, the wreath came from the district which meant the purchasing of it was down to either the district commissioner or a leader selected to do the job on her behalf. Unless you’re coming in out of the blue as district commissioner, this isn’t something you have to worry about. For what it’s worth, they cost about £20, I think.
Units presented a cross each. You can buy them from the trays in any shop that sells poppies so that’s nice and easy.
In my old Guide unit, we held our parade in our village instead of joining in the big parade at the other end of the district and because we were the only unit there, we had to buy the wreath. A lady walked into Guides one week, introduced herself as the poppy lady and informed me that she’d be bringing a wreath in two weeks and expected a cheque made out to this name. This was an agreement made by the previous leader and simply imposed on me, which was easier than figuring out what I was supposed to do.
I would assume unless you hear otherwise, that someone else will deal with the wreath.
How does the parade work?
Like I said, it varies.
In my usual parade in my old district, the one I went to every year from the age of at least seven until the pandemic stopped it, everyone meets at the British Legion at about 10am. We make sure all the girls are smart and wearing a poppy and we get them into formation, which means mostly into pairs. Every unit has a flag so we give that to the most responsible girl (or sometimes the tallest, the oldest, the smartest-dressed etc). She wears a leather strap which goes over one shoulder and then the flagpole sits in the holder. She’s accompanied by a “colour guard” which in our case just means a girl on each side. Sometimes one of them will carry the district wreath – we have a wreath from the entire district, which has its writing done by the district commissioner. Each unit presents a cross and that’s also carried by the colour guard.
Then we set off. There’s a small military band first, then the veterans, then any current military, the cadets, the Scouts and finally the Guides. We try to organise it from Rainbows at the front to Rangers at the back but given that leaders run multiple units, sometimes it just has to work that you keep your own units together.
We walk – we don’t march; we’re not a military organisation – to the church in the next village. It feels like a massive journey but Google Maps says it’s only 1.4km. In my day, we used to stamp on the cats’ eyes if it had been raining because if you do that, water squirts up your leg and that’s hilarious. These days, they’ve been taken out. The parents and anyone who wants to join in walks along on the pavement and the road is closed. It’s closed officially by the council and there are signs and pre-warning and so on but it’s the motorbike gangs that enforce that. They sit there on their big Harleys, dressed in leather and spikes and make sure no one can get out until the parade has passed and then they drive along behind and catch up.
When we arrive, the people who’ve taken part in the parade gather around the war memorial and everyone else crams into the churchyard and up against the fence. Girlguiding is usually behind the cadets on the right and the Scouts, I think, are on the left. The colour party stays at the front and when everyone is in position, they walk up and present the wreath and crosses. The flagbearers stand with the rest of the flags at the front and lower them accordingly.
We have the presenting of the poppies, the reading of the list of the fallen, a short service and the silence out there. Then we go into the church. Paraders get priority with seats – in reality, this means the Guides sit three girls to two seats and the Brownies often sit on the floor behind the altar while everyone else squeezes in wherever they can fit. The flagbearers come in last, in pairs. They present the flags which are stood up behind the altar and then the flagbearers go… somewhere. I actually don’t know where they go. The vicar does a service, a collection is taken, no one knows the words or the tunes to the hymns and during the last hymn, the flagbearers line up again to receive the flags back and then they walk decorously back down the aisle and wait for us outside.
When the last hymn and the closing speech is over, the rest of us go outside. The flagbearers have invariably been given the wrong flags because one Brownie flag looks identical to another and no one’s whispering “Are you 1st or 2nd X or are you 2nd Y?” in the middle of a hymn so they sort out the flags while they wait. We all use the old ones, the dark brown ones with the yellow pre-90s style trefoil on them. They’re much prettier than the modern ones.
Then we get back into position in the car park, same order as before and we walk back. In recent years, we’ve had a short reception in the legion, which consists of everyone grabbing a drink and a biscuit and someone thanking us for coming while the parents push through the crowds looking for their child.
And that’s it. Go home, watch the big one in London on TV.
At the other one, at the other end of the district (the day with the purple leggings, incidentally), we met at the village hall at maybe 10.30. Everyone squished in and we had the service in there. Then we ambled 150 yards up the road, with no order whatsoever, and gathered around the war memorial for the presenting of wreaths and the waving of flags. Ambled back to the village hall straight afterwards. After 20-odd years of a fairly regimented parade, it was a bit of a shock to the system.
Where do I get the flags from?
If you’re taking over an existing unit, you’ve probably already got one. Rootle around in the cupboard. Is there a tall thin thing in a leather case? That’s your flag!
If you really don’t have a flag, be aware that this is possibly the biggest purchase you’ll ever make. You order it via the bespoke merchandise range by emailing Girlguiding and it costs a fortune! I don’t know the official Girlguiding prices but on the Scout & Guide Shop (which is unofficial), a plain carrying flag (135cm x 90cm) is £106 and it’ll take at least 12 weeks to arrive. You need this sorted before you go back in September if you’re determined to have one for Remembrance Parade. That’s a white one with the blue and pink Girlguiding logo on it. If you want a Rainbow or Brownie flag, that shop has them at £91 and Guide/Ranger flags at £106. Or you could go for a World Flag, which doesn’t have the unit personalisation on and is therefore only £37.
But that’s just the flag! You’ll need a flagpole (£85), a finial (£10), a carrier (no price given) and a case (£15-£22). So, assuming you’re getting a proper unit flag, that comes to £225 before the leather carrier is added. For a flag you’ll carry once a year!
Don’t panic if you don’t have a flag. If you’ve shown up in smart uniform and with the appropriate poppies, you’ll be fine. A flag is a nice thing to have at a parade but I promise you’re not the only unit in the country to not have one – many units will look at the price and decide that’s just not a priority and probably no one will even notice.
And in conclusion…
I don’t know what you’ll do with your unit. Maybe you’ll parade. Maybe you’ll attend a service. Maybe you’ll attend the bit at the war memorial. Maybe you’ll do a combination. See what the rest of the district/division says. But make sure you dress nice and smart!
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