There was nowhere to put a name

Janie Vallance used to ride to the National Memorial Arboretum and walk among hundreds of stones. After her partner, a Royal Marine veteran, died by suicide in July 2019, she looked for a place that would name what had happened to him. There was not one.

“I have met dozens of families in my position and yet, not one of us has somewhere to put the name of our lost loved one despite them serving our country,” she later wrote on the site of the Elysium Memorial Foundation. She cried when she heard they were going to put a memorial in.

On Sunday they did. Hundreds of people came to Alrewas, in Staffordshire, for the dedication of what the BBC and the charity both call the first permanent memorial of its kind in the UK: for veterans and serving personnel who have died by suicide. More than 300 motorcyclists rode over from Burton-on-Trent with a community group called Wheels for Wishes. A piper played Flowers of the Forest. A padre said the prayers. A trumpet played The Funeral. People laid their own wreaths.

Edward Mackenzie, who co-founded the charity after more than thirty years in the army, told the BBC he was blown away. He has lost more than twenty friends this way, including his best friend. Seeing them recognised, he said, “means everything”.

“This is why I did it, I did for the friends, the families, the comrades, those that we've lost to suicide.”

The stone had already made a public journey. In June it left A.D. Calvert’s yard in Leyburn, North Yorkshire, cut from Witton Fell sandstone from the firm’s own quarry in the Dales, and travelled south with a motorcycle guard of honour. Allison Calvert, operations director, called it an honour to be trusted with the work, with Catterick Garrison close by. The foundation names the figure the Weary Hero: a physically worn, mentally exhausted warrior. In Greek myth, Elysium was for those the gods judged worthy.

The Ministry of Defence recorded 277 suicides among serving UK regular armed forces personnel between 2006 and 2025. That count is people still in uniform, not the veteran figure. In 2021 alone, the Office for National Statistics, linking death records to the census and the Service Leavers Database, identified 253 suicides among UK armed forces veterans in England and Wales: about one in twenty of all suicides that year among people aged 16 and over. Those are official statistics in development. They miss Scotland and Northern Ireland. They still undercount people the databases could not link.

A defence spokesperson told the BBC that any death by suicide is a tragedy felt across the community, and pointed to money in Op Courage and the Valour programme.

Mandy Small wrote to the foundation about Chris, who served twenty-one years in the army and deployed to every conflict zone, sometimes more than once. “Some people ask me why we need a memorial, do we not remember Chris every day?” she asked. “Yes we do, he is never far from our lips or our minds. However, to know that he is remembered not just by us but his country brings a feeling of peace, a feeling of acceptance. One day I will be gone and the only person that will remember the true Chris will be our son.”

The memorial sits by the poppy fields, at the Quaker memorial end of the arboretum, among more than 400 others on 150 acres. Mackenzie hopes people in the same position will come and sit. He told the BBC he wants the word suicide taken out of the shadows, and that there is still amazing work to do.

If you need to talk, Samaritans listen on 116 123, free, any time. Veterans, serving personnel and their families can call the Combat Stress helpline on 0800 138 1619, also around the clock.