The crowd had come from all over Britain to pay their respects to the fallen. Soldiers from The Rifles and The Royal Tank Regiment lined the road, the standard-bearers of the Royal British Legion lowered their flags, the church bells rang and the first of eight hearses carrying soldiers killed in Helmand nosed down the packed high street.

For locals marking the passage of repatriated soldiers through Wootton Bassett, Wiltshire, a ritual has developed that mixes the formalities of a military observance with something more disordered and spontaneous.

Even as the standard-bearers lowered their flags and the soldiers stood in the silence, there came a strange sound. The mayor frowned. Uniformed officers looked bemused. Somewhere near the bottom of the high street, someone had started clapping.

In the crowd there were people from Cornwall, from Wales and Scotland. Fifty had come from Walsall, home of Corporal Jonathan Horne.

What began as a very local ceremony has become a national one, and no one quite knows the protocol. The clapping was taken up on both sides of the street as the hearses paused for a moment by the town’s war memorial. Peter Horne, 34, ran out through the line of soldiers to tie a rose to the rack of the third hearse in the convoy, which carried his brother, six years his junior. He hammered the windows of the hearse as it moved away, his eyes red.

“My brother loved the Army. He served in Kosovo, he was blown up in Iraq, but he loved it,” said Mr Horne. “He would have loved this ceremony here today. If anything I think he would have wanted something a bit more flamboyant. He was always the centre of attention.”

Mr Horne, a delivery driver, had led the crowd from Walsall. They met the family of Rifleman Joseph Murphy, 18, in a pub in the high street and together watched the television coverage of the aircraft carrying them into nearby RAF Lyneham.

“He was killed in the second blast with Jonathan. It was comforting to be with them,” said Mr Horne.

Farther up the street was Gilda Axtell, from Hemel Hempstead, whose son Christopher is serving in Afghanistan and who had acted as a pall-bearer at Camp Bastion in Helmand. “He put them on the plane, and now we are here to meet them,” she said.

Robin and Helena Thatcher, whose son Cyrus was killed aged 19 in Afghanistan six weeks ago, stood with Sharon Hudson, from Dorset, whose son Kevin is serving as a lance corporal in the same company. Pete and Bernie Harris, from Rugby, had also come because their son is on tour in Helmand. “There is something quite supportive about being here,” said Mr Harris.

Some had relatives who had served, others had served themselves. Ron Baker, 70, from Buckinghamshire, formerly of The Royal Fusiliers, now a financial adviser, was there to remember the man who died in his arms in Cyprus 50 years ago. “I was listening to the radio this morning and decided not to work today but brush off my hackle and come here,” he said.

Others had no link to the military and came because the young men carried home in flag-wrapped coffins reminded them of their own children. Elaine Guilding, 50, a nurse from Swindon, had cycled to Wootton Bassett. “I have five kids myself,” she said.

Such connections with fallen soldiers, real and imagined, spread across the country and are drawing ever larger crowds to Wootton High Street. “We have never had clapping before,” said Steve Bucknell, the town’s mayor. “But if there are people who think the most appropriate thing is to clap, who are we to say any different? These ceremonies are different every time, with different friends and family, different members of the Army. From a few people paying their respects it’s grown into this.”

There is some concern in the town that what began as a small ceremony is growing out of hand. But as the relatives and friends retreated to the pubs to watch the coverage of the ceremony on the evening news, many hoped the images of this spontaneous surge of grief in an old English high street would prove a comfort to soldiers watching from Afghanistan. And a fitting tribute to the fallen.

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