Remembrance Day

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The Queen has laid her wreath at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday every year of her reign, except in 1959, 1961, 1963, 1968, 1983 and 1999 when she was either pregnant or overseas on an official visit.

Veterans Day is commemorated in the United States on 11 November, and is both a federal and a state holiday. This means that all Federal employees will be granted a day's holiday. However, it is left up to individual states to decide whether schools will open or not. However, if 11 November occurs on a Sunday then the following Monday is taken for holiday leave, and if it occurs Saturday then either Monday or Friday may be designated.

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In the USA, 11 November was formerly known as Armistice Day. However, the name was changed after the end of World War II.

The poppy has a long association with Remembrance Day. Scarlet corn poppies grow naturally in conditions of disturbed earth throughout Western Europe. The destruction caused by the Napoleonic wars of the early 19th Century transformed bare land into fields of blood red poppies, growing around the bodies of the fallen soldiers.

In late 1914, the fields of Northern France and Flanders were once again devastated as World War One raged through Europe. Once the war was over the poppy was one of the first plants to grow on the barren battlefields.

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The significance of the poppy as a lasting memorial symbol to the fallen was realised by the Canadian surgeon John McCrae in his poem In Flanders Fields. The poppy came to represent the immeasurable sacrifice made by his comrades and quickly became a lasting memorial to those who died in World War One and later conflicts.

The Poppy was adopted by The Royal British Legion as the symbol for their Poppy Appeal, in aid of those serving in the British Armed Forces, after its formation in 1921.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep,
though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

John McCrae
May 1915



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Inspiration for the poem
On 2 May, 1915, in the second week of fighting during the Second Battle of Ypres, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer was killed by a German artillery shell. He was a friend of the Canadian military doctor Major John McCrae. It is believed that John McCrae began the draft for his famous poem 'In Flanders Fields' that evening.

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen MC (18 March 1893 - 4 November 1918) was an English poet and soldier, regarded by many as one of the leading poets of the First World War. His shocking, realistic war poetry on the horrors of trench and gas warfare was heavily influenced by his friend Siegfried Sassoon and sat in stark contrast to both the public perception of war at the time, and to the confidently patriotic verse written earlier by war poets such as Rupert Brooke.

Some of his best-known works-most of which were published posthumously-include Dulce Et Decorum Est, Insensibility, Anthem for Doomed Youth, Futility and Strange Meeting. His preface intended for a book of poems to be published in 1919 contains numerous well-known phrases, especially 'War, and the pity of War', and 'the Poetry is in the pity'.

He is perhaps just as well-known for having been killed in action at the Battle of the Sambre just a week before the war ended, causing news of his death to reach home as the town's church bells declared peace.

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We'd found an old Boche dug-out, and he knew,
And gave us hell, for shell on frantic shell
Hammered on top, but never quite burst through.
Rain, guttering down in waterfalls of slime
Kept slush waist high, that rising hour by hour,
Choked up the steps too thick with clay to climb.
What murk of air remained stank old, and sour
With fumes of whizz-bangs, and the smell of men
Who'd lived there years, and left their curse in the den,
If not their corpses. . . .

There we herded from the blast
Of whizz-bangs, but one found our door at last.
Buffeting eyes and breath, snuffing the candles.
And thud! flump! thud! down the steep steps came thumping
And splashing in the flood, deluging muck -
The sentry's body; then his rifle, handles
Of old Boche bombs, and mud in ruck on ruck.
We dredged him up, for killed, until he whined
"O sir, my eyes - I'm blind - I'm blind, I'm blind!"
Coaxing, I held a flame against his lids
And said if he could see the least blurred light
He was not blind; in time he'd get all right.
"I can't," he sobbed. Eyeballs, huge-bulged like squids
Watch my dreams still; but I forgot him there
In posting next for duty, and sending a scout
To beg a stretcher somewhere, and floundering about
To other posts under the shrieking air.

Those other wretches, how they bled and spewed,
And one who would have drowned himself for good, -
I try not to remember these things now.
Let dread hark back for one word only: how
Half-listening to that sentry's moans and jumps,
And the wild chattering of his broken teeth,
Renewed most horribly whenever crumps
Pummelled the roof and slogged the air beneath -
Through the dense din, I say, we heard him shout
"I see your lights!" But ours had long died out.

Wilfred Owen
18 March 1893 - 04 November 1918

The phrase "Lest we forget" has become synonimous with Remembrance Day. This is the origin of the phrase:

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God of our fathers, known of old,
Lord of our far-flung battle-line,
Beneath whose awful Hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget lest we forget!

The tumult and the shouting dies;
The Captains and the Kings depart:
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget lest we forget!

Far-called, our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget lest we forget!

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,
Such boastings as the Gentiles use,
Or lesser breeds without the Law
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget lest we forget!

For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard,
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding, calls not Thee to guard,
For frantic boast and foolish word
Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord!

Rudyard Kipling

In 1920, it was proposed that the body of an unknown soldier, sailor or airman lying in an unmarked grave abroad be returned to England for burial in Westminster Abbey. This was to symbolise all those who had died for their country but whose place of death was not known. It is thought that the idea came from the reverend David Railton, who had served as a chaplain on the Western Front.

There are a number of versions of how the Unknown Warrior was selected, but it is generally agreed that between four and six bodies were exhumed from each of the main British battle areas on the Western Front on the night of 7 November 1920, and brought to the chapel at St Pol, in northern France. Each was covered with a Union Jack. The commander of British troops in France and Flanders, Brigadier-General LJ Wyatt, picked one. This was placed in a coffin which was taken to Boulogne, where it was transported to Dover on HMS Verdun. The other bodies were reburied.

King George V Leading Procession for the Burial of the Unknown Soldier of World War I

On the morning of 11 November 1920 - the second anniversary of the armistice - the Unknown Warrior was taken by horse drawn carriage in a procession to the Cenotaph in London. This war memorial on Whitehall, designed by Edwin Lutyens, was then unveiled by King George V. At 11 o'clock there was a two minutes silence, and the body was then taken to Westminster Abbey where it was buried.

The Queen and her family walk past the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior,
following the funeral of Earl Mountbatten of Burma, in 1979

In the week after the burial an estimated 1,250,000 people visited the abbey, and the site is now one of the most visited war graves in the world. The text inscribed on the tomb: 'They buried him among the Kings, because he had done good toward God and toward his house' is from the Bible (2 Chronicles 24:16).

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

"Here Rests
In Honored Glory
An American Soldier
Known But To God"

Debnet
Alfred George Winter 1897-1941 My Great Uncle who was a trainee/cadet in the Royal Flying Corps in WW1 and flew byplanes over Egypt. In 1941 (WW2), he lost his life whilst laying over his wife and child to protect them, during the London Blitz.

MiMi
We owe so much to our soldiers. Here, in America, they come home to poor health care. They are changed forever, and we don't do enough to help lessen their mental anguish.

Carrie
I would like to remember my father, Ted and my partner's father, John both served in the army. Ted died when I was 16 and John died two years ago. May they rest in peace. Miss them both loads :(

Susan52
I'm remembering my son's close friend, Jeremy, killed in Iraq July 5, 2007. My son was a vehicle or two behind him, so it could have been him or any of the other Marines in that convoy. Blessings to Jeremy's family, always.

In 1928, a year after the inauguration of the Menin Gate Memorial, a number of prominent citizens in Ypres decided that some way should be found to express the gratitude of the Belgian nation towards those who had died for its freedom and independence.

The idea of the daily sounding of the Last Post - the traditional salute to the fallen warrior - was that of the Superintendant of the Ypres Police, Mr P Vandenbraambussche. The Menin Gate Memorial on the east side of Ypres was thought to be the most appropriate location for the ceremony. Originally this was the location of the old city gate leading to the Ypres Salient battlefields through which so many passed on their way to the front line.

The privilege of playing Last Post was given to buglers of the local voluntary Fire Brigade. However, the tradition has now been established around the world.

Source: Globalnet

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Day is done...
Gone the sun
From the lake...
From the hills...
From the sky.
All is well...
Safely rest
God is nigh.

Fading light....
Dims the sight
And a star....
Gems the sky....
Gleaming bright
From afar....
Drawing nigh
Falls the night.

Major General Daniel Butterfield

Our soldiers are still at war. Where did it all go wrong? World War 1 came to represent such carnage and loss. We thought we had learned so much from World War 2.

Then came Korea, Vietnam, The Falklands Conflict. On home soil in the UK, during the 70s we learned to look under our cars if they were parked in London in case a bomb had been put underneath it.

Then there was Kuwait, followed by Iraq and Afghanistan and countless other "conflicts".

I know a young man who only lived because he could not sleep and had left his tent in Basra just before the rockets came in and destroyed the camp. Three of his friends died. Eighteen months later he may have left the forces without a scratch, but he will bear the mental scars forever.

My son thought about being a Marine. If he had joined up, he would probably be in active combat now. I cannot begin to imagine what it must be like for the friends and families of our soldiers who are fighting a war that many believe should not have happened.

I pray for the safe return of your loved ones, wherever they may be.

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