ARMED Forces Day is rapidly becoming a very important date in the nation’s calendar, and rightly so.

When it was launched three years ago, sceptics questioned why it was needed, when we already marked Remembrance Sunday each November.

The range of activities taking place across Oxfordshire this weekend proves how wrong they were.

Remembrance Sunday is a sacred day, when we mark those who gave their lives for our freedoms in every conflict since the western world was torn apart on the Western Front almost a century ago.

It is a sombre and heavy day of tribute.

But Armed Forces Day is about celebrating and thanking the men and women who serve today, whether on the front line, or supporting them in bases across the world.

It is about making sure we show our gratitude and respect to our soldiers, sailors and airmen all the time, and not just when the guns begin to fire.

By turning out in Oxfordshire’s market towns this weekend, the public showed their thanks to the thousands of families who shape their lives around military duty.