Lest We Forget

The final armistice of the Great War, world war one as it later became known, was signed at 5 a.m. on the morning of 11 November 1918, and came into effect six hours later at 11 a.m.

On November 7, 1919 King George V of the British Empire, what is now Great Britain and the Commonwealth of Nations, issued a proclamation calling for a two-minute silence at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. His proclamation requested that "all locomotion should cease, so that, in perfect stillness, the thoughts of everyone may be concentrated on reverent remembrance of the glorious dead".

In the Commonwealth the day is now known as ‘Remembrance Day’. 

In Flanders Fields 

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