Not all servicemen die in battle. They can be the casualties of training accidents, aiding the civil power, or terrorist attacks.

Since the end of the Second World War 16,000 British servicemen and their auxiliary forces have lost their lives in a variety of circumstances. Yesterday the Queen opened a national memorial to them, where relatives and friends of the lost can reflect before a carved list of their names.

There is nothing quite like it, and there has long been a call for a memorial to take over from where the Commonwealth War Graves Commission closes its books at 1948. There are memorials around the world to particular regiments, campaigns and even individuals, but no national shrine on home soil.

Public subscription, National Lottery funding, and a modest £1.5 million government contribution from the sale of a Trafalgar commemorative coin, have enabled completion of the £7 million National Armed Forces Memorial at the National Memorial Arboretum in Alrewas, Staffordshire, near the geographical centre of England. Trustees still need to raise a further £1 million to ensure that the memorial is properly maintained.

The names carved in the Portland stone walls span age, class and ethnicity. They include Earl Mountbatten of Burma, killed by an IRA bomb in the Irish Republic in 1979, and Jabron Hashmi of the Intelligence Corps, killed in Afghanistan last year, the first Muslim in the British Armed Forces of recent times to lose his life.

Death is a great leveller, but it arrives from many directions. Maureen Norton, 54, from Wigan, Greater Manchester, was among many family members who attended the opening. Her brother, Terence Griffin, was on leave from serving in Northern Ireland when he was killed by a bomb that exploded on a coach carrying service personnel and their families on the M62 across the Pennines. “This means an awful lot to me,” Mrs Norton said. “It means his name has been recognised . . . Even though I will remember him every day, I can come to this beautiful place; it’s so tranquil.”

Gerald Fellows, who served in the RAF at the time of the 1956 Suez conflict said: “It is really good that this kind of memorial has been built to honour those who died after the Second World War.”

The Queen, accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince of Wales, Duchess of Cornwall, Gordon Brown, Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and service chiefs, met families and inspected the walls that carry the names of the dead from a host of theatres of war and peace — Palestine, Korea, Malaysia, the Falklands, the Balkans, Afghanistan, Northern Ireland and now Iraq.

Vice-Admiral Sir John Dunt, chairman of the memorial’s trustees, told guests: “I hope that those who have been bereaved, and colleagues of those whose names are engraved find this a fitting place to remember and reflect. There will be sorrow for family and friends who come here, but I hope they will also be uplifted.”

Designed by Liam O’Connor, the memorial has the backing of the Prince of Wales, who is patron of its trustees. Dying, sadly, is unlikely to go out of fashion. The memorial has enough spare blank space for 15,000 more names in the future.

Honouring the dead

Thiepval Ridge and the Menin Gate, Ypres Memorials to First World War carnage whose bronze tablets list the names of more than 60,000 missing from the Somme. They don’t even count the known dead, of which there are too many

Australian War Memorial, Canberra One of the finest examples of a national memorial anywhere, bearing the names of 102,000 Aussies who died in campaigns from Gallipoli to East Timor

Vietnam Memorial, Washington DC Listing all 58,000 US war dead on its black marble walls, it is regarded as the first US war memorial to elevate the individual over the cause.

Holocaust Memorial, Berlin Belatedly opened in 2005, its field of 2,700 concrete slabs near the Brandenburg Gate has caused upset among many Jews because they are devoid of names or inscriptions

Culloden Moor, Inverness The National Trust for Scotland lovingly maintains the site of its country’s last great military disaster in 1746, when Hanoverian Redcoats slaughtered at least 1,000 Highlanders and eliminated the last Catholic hope of regaining the British throne

Blue Beach The Falklands conflict in 1982 was the first in British military history in which relatives of the dead were offered the option to have the bodies repatriated. Of the 255 British casualties – of whom a number were lost at sea – only 23 remain buried at Blue Beach cemetery overlooking San Carlos Water. A memorial on the Stanley seafront records the names of all the dead

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