I’m grateful for the chance to speak in this debate and I wish to start by welcoming the first world war commemoration programme for Wales that’s been developed by the Welsh Government in partnership with key organisations, including the Royal British Legion and the armed forces themselves.

We’ve already seen and continue to see a range of commemorations taking place to mark both the outbreak of the war and the significant battles that took place. In April last year, I was privileged to attend a commemoration at Whitehall to mark 100 years since the Gallipoli campaign, after my mum responded to a media notification advising that surviving relatives could attend to pay their respects. We applied and went to Whitehall to remember James Brockley, my great great uncle who was killed in action on 9 August 1915. His brother Jack was in the same battalion; he was injured when he found out the fate of his brother.

There are a great many initiatives and community events happening across the country to commemorate the centenary of the first world war, and I—[Interruption.] I intend to make the most of this opportunity to share with Members a fantastic initiative based in north-east Wales. In my own constituency of Delyn, Viv and Eifion Williams have established Flintshire Memorials, or ‘Names on Stone’ as it’s better known on Twitter. Flintshirewarmemorials.com is a community website staffed by volunteers—around 24 in total at the moment—and each volunteer takes a memorial in Flintshire to research; ‘Flintshire’ that is, as it was defined at the end of world war one. The researchers find out what they can using various sources—local, national and international—and family members of the researched servicemen have to contact the organisation to share more information, and photos, letters and so on then get added to the servicemen’s story.

Flintshire Memorials has gone from strength to strength after receiving a lottery grant of £10,000 in 2015 to develop the project and has since organised study trips to France and Flanders in April over the last two years, and is reaching out to the community to give talks and tell the stories of the servicemen to local groups, ranging from the Women’s Institute to rotary clubs, and, importantly, to schools.

As we take time to remember those who served in world war one during the centenary commemorations, let us also recognise volunteers and organisations like Flintshire Memorials who are doing sterling work reminding us of those who served and fell in our own communities across Wales. Diolch.