I am writing as chairwoman of the Bradford on Avon French Twinning Association to point out that our twin town is Sully-sur-Loire, not Soisy-sur-Seine as it says in your report last week ‘War memorial is rededicated’. This is embarrassing for us and deeply insulting to our twin town. I trust you will quickly print an apology, and recognise the important part the twin towns played in the ceremony.

The Bradford on Avon commemoration was unique in including our twin towns, Elblag in Poland, Norden in Germany, and Sully-sur-Loire in France. This initiative came from the Town Council, and underlines the importance of peace in Europe which twinning exists to encourage and maintain. During the service Rev Joanna Abecassis said; “Looking back a hundred years to 1914, historians see that the underlying cause of the war was a lack of sufficient commitment to peace in all the powerful nations of Europe.”

Vicky Ody represented the German Twinning and spoke the words being said at a parallel ceremony in Norden itself. Michael Sutton, chairman of the Polish twinning, spoke movingly of Elblag’s complicated history because it was part of Germany in 1914-18, Poland not then existing as a nation.

I said that of all the men who left the small town of Sully-sur-Loire for the battlefields,122 never returned. As the War Memorial in Sully shows, many were very young, but quite a few were over 30 and some over 40. All left grieving families and the older men probably had children who were left without fathers, underlining the tragedy of the war for future generations. The Western Front and important battlefields were mostly within France, which lost even more men than Britain. In England there are 52 communities that lost no servicemen in the war, which became known as the Thankful Villages. In the entire country of France only one village lost no soldier in the Great War.

Vivienne Kynaston, Elms Cross Drive, Bradford on Avon.

Editor’s response: The mistake in last week’s report was down to human error: in line with our policy, as published above, we acknowledge this, and apologise for any unintentional insult and embarrassment caused.