World War II veteran Harold Jellicoe Percival died in his Lancashire, United Kingdom nursing home on October 25 at the age of 99. Being that Harold was single and had no surviving family or friends to attend his funeral, the funeral home added to his newspaper obituary a request that any serviceman in the area attend if possible.
Thanks to the beauty of the internet, which found Harold's obituary, posted the image online, and saw it quickly go viral on Twitter. A reddit post calling on reddit users to attend was upvoted to the top of the front page for most of the weekend. The funeral was held today, which is Remembrance Day in the UK, and according to BBC News, "About a hundred people were inside [the service] with another 400 standing silently outside in the rain."
With today being Veterans' Day, I'd like to take another opportunity to thank everyone who has served in the military for their courage and their willingness to sacrifice their own lives to ensure we have the freedoms we do. The world is richer and we are luckier because you have stood tall and defended us. As I said earlier today on Facebook, never forget for a single second that we are the land of the free because of the brave.
very inspiring!
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