We Will Remember Them

In 1918, at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the guns fell silent along the Western and Eastern fronts in Europe. An armistice had been signed, and the Great War had ended, after over four years of the bloodiest warfare ever.

There is an almost cruel irony in the fact that the first and also some of the last shots of the war were fired within fifty metres of each other.


4th Dragoon Memorial,
Casteau, Belgium

On August 22nd 1914, a British cavalry troop, the 4th Dragoon Guards, were involved in the first skirmish with the Germans at a small village called Casteau, near the Belgian town of Mons. During this short battle, Captain E Thomas fired the first shot at the enemy, and killed a German cavalry officer.

Canadian Memorial at Casteau

On the morning of November 11th, 1918, a Canadian Infantry Battalion were on the trail of retreating German soldiers, and after firing their final shots, they stopped firing at 11 o’clock at the village of Casteau.

In the four years between those first and last shots in the small Belgian village, hundreds of thousands lives had been lost in the trenches and battlefields on the Western and Eastern fronts.

August 22nd, 1914                      November 11th 1918

In 1915 Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae wrote a poem after presiding over the funeral of a friend who died in the Second Battle of Ypres:

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.

 

The references to the red poppies that grew over the graves of fallen soldiers resulted in the poppy becoming one of the world's most recognized memorial symbols for soldiers who have died in conflicts.

In Britain, a Festival of Remembrance is held at the Royal Albert Hall in London on the Saturday nearest to November 11th. It commemorates all who have lost their lives in conflicts. Part concert, part memorial service, it concludes with a parade of representatives of all the armed forces as well as the uniformed volunteer organisations. Once they are all in place in the large arena, there is a two minute silence, and thousands of poppy petals are released from the roof. It is said there is one poppy petal for each person who has died in conflicts.

Image by Sgt G Spark, RAF

The following morning, another service is held at the Cenotaph in London’s Whitehall, and at the same time, similar services are held at hundreds of war memorials in every part of the country, and also wherever British troops are serving overseas. If  November 11th doesn't fall on a Sunday, a two minute silence is observed 'at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day'.

 

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

Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

(Lawrence Binyon)

My great-uncle's grave in a small cemetery
in the Somme area of France.
He died in March 1918, aged 20.

Stanley Charles Garnar
1897 - 1918