Fed: Australian troops to form part of funeral procession

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Fed: Australian troops to form part of funeral procession

CANBERRA, April 2 AAP - Australian troops will form part of a spectacular funeral processionfor the Queen Mother on Friday involving 1,600 servicemen and women from Commonwealthcountries.

Six Australian soldiers will march behind the Queen Mother's coffin as it travels fromthe Queen's Chapel at St James's Palace to Westminster Hall.

The coffin, surmounted by the Queen Mother's crown, will be borne on a horse-drawngun carriage to Westminster.

There she will lie in state until her funeral the following Tuesday, when John Howardwill become the first Australian prime minister to attend a royal funeral.

The Australian troops will be drawn from a unit closely linked to the royal familyrather than from the Centenary Guard, a unit specially created for such ceremonial activities.

The six soldiers will come from the Royal Australian Army Medical Corps of which theQueen Mother had served as colonel-in-chief since the death of her husband King GeorgeVI in 1952.

Senior Royals will walk behind the coffin during the procession, which will be biggerthan that held for the royal funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales.

The gun carriage will be drawn by the King's Troop Royal Horse Artillery and escortedby military detachments from British and Commonwealth regiments associated with the QueenMother during her long life.

The procession from the Queen's Chapel to Westminster will be led by mounted policefollowed by Royal Air Force Bands and South African troops from the Witwatersrand Rifles,Transvaal Scottish and Cape Town Highlanders.

Next in line will be the Royal New Zealand Army Medical Corps, Royal Australian ArmyMedical Corps, Canadian Forces Medical Services, Toronto Scottish Regiment and Black Watch(Royal Highland Regiment) of Canada.

Parliamentary records suggest no Australian prime ministers have previously attendeda royal funeral, preferring to leave such occasions to other representatives.

In 1952, then prime minister Sir Robert Menzies was in Australia on the day of KingGeorge VI's funeral, the Queen Mother's husband.

He observed two minutes silence in his Canberra office with the then High Commissionerfor the United Kingdom E.J. Williams before flying to Melbourne where he read the lessonat a memorial service at Melbourne's Exhibition Hall.

AAP sm/daw/hu/sb

KEYWORD: ROYALS MOTHER TROOPS