Remembrance Day in the United Kingdom, different to ANZAC Day in Australia

Big Ben struck the first stroke of eleven o’clock. A cannon boomed somewhere behind Horse Guards Parade.

A bugler commenced the mournful Last Post. 

Traffic stopped. 

A great silence came over Whitehall in London. 

Heads bowed. 

We joined some thousands of people in an act of remembrance. 

The seconds ticked silently by. 

The jackhammers just up the road were quiet. 

Pedestrians stopped. 

People in cafes stood silently in their places. 

Two minutes passed. 

The cannon boomed again. 

The bugler played The Rouse. 

Movement started once again ... except where we were, at the London Cenotaph. 

A dozen or so wreaths were laid, a couple placed by small children. 

Some elderly folk laid flowers on the stones steps. 

Some service people placed wreaths, and saluted. 

A chap in a wheelchair was wheeled forward to toss his wreath on the stair. 

It was straightened by a Sergeant Major from the Marines. 

The “remembering” seems to be largely driven by the Royal British Legion (RBL), which appears to be a combination of what we know in Australia as Legacy, unit associations, and the welfare arm of the RSL. 

For weeks now we have seen probably every other person wearing a poppy, on sale at street corners and in shops everywhere. 

On Saturday night TV, we watched the RBL Festival of Remembrance, in the presence of the Queen, from Royal Albert Hall, part concert, part remembrance service, and culminating in a shower of red poppy petals from the ceiling during the whole of the two minutes’ silence.

The main commemorations are held on the second Sunday in November. 

Parades of veterans and wreath-layings take place at memorials all over the country. 

We were in Cwmann, a small village near Lampeter in Wales, and witnessed a small commemoration with our friends the Hardy’s. 

We had been to church with Dini, the service in Welsh, although in deference to us and a visitor from South Africa, the vicar gave us some English as well! 

The service was short so we could go up the hill to the War Memorial. 

This Remembrance Day in the United Kingdom was made poignant because, just the day before, the bodies of six servicemen, killed in Afghanistan, arrived home in Britain. 

To add an even greater sadness, the morning of Remembrance Day was greeted with the news of the deaths of two more British soldiers. 

Apart from the sadness, the loss and the grieving, these continuing casualties feed a growing anger within the electorate, an anger borne not just only of the waste of life, but also of the waste of resources, the seeming futility of the effort, and an endlessness of politicking.

... and so, we remembered, in London, and in Wales (2009).