We will remember them

 

We will remember them

The latest post box topper draws attention to Remembrance Day. It is not a celebration of war and it is pleasing to note that there are purple and white poppies, as well as the more familiar scarlet flowers. The purple poppies symbolise the many animals that have been killed in so many wars. The white poppies represent remembrance for all victims of conflict and a wish for peace. White poppies are often worn by Quakers.

‘They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old,

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn,

At the going down of the sun and in the morning,

We will remember them.’

These words, the fourth stanza of Robert Laurence Binyon’s ‘Ode of Remembrance,’ are spoken at the Cenotaph in London and at countless village memorials and military bases throughout the world on Remembrance Sunday. It is a solemn, poignant moment and is followed by the deepening quietness of the two-minute silence. Whatever the size of the gathering, it is moving to observe the reverence displayed, in particular by the very old and the extremely young. 

At 11 a.m. on November 11^th, the moment at which the Armistice came into effect in 1918, having been agreed at 05.10.am, many businesses, schools, and other organisations, observe the silence.

It was first observed on November 11^th, 1919, to mark the first anniversary of the cessation of the First World War. It was initiated by King George V, who issued a proclamation appealing for a two-minute silence ‘to remember the fallen.’ The first minute was to remember those who had died in conflict, soldiers, and civilians alike, and the second was to give thought to those left behind, the maimed and the bereaved, who must continue with their altered lives.

Laurence Binyon wrote ‘For the Fallen’ in September 1914, a few weeks after war was declared when many casualties had been suffered at the Battles of Mons and Le Cateau and the First Battle of the Marne.

In 1915, aged forty-six, he volunteered as a hospital orderly in France and later, in England, cared for the returned wounded from the ten-month long Battle of Verdun.