The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh each laid a cross to open the
Field of Remembrance at Westminster Abbey. At 1100 GMT, in line with
tradition, they led the nation in a two-minute silence, before meeting
veterans.
The Royal British Legion staged a flypast at 1800 GMT and dropped
three million poppy petals above the Thames. The petals - one for
every British and Commonwealth service person killed in action since
the beginning of World War I - were dropped between Tower and
Westminster bridges by an original World War II Douglas Dakota DC3
aircraft during a two-minute flypast.
The river will be lit up in red every night until Sunday when the
Queen, accompanied by about 9,000 veterans, will lay a wreath at the
Cenotaph. At the Field of Remembrance, relatives and friends will
plant about 20,000 tiny wooden crosses, each adorned with a blood-red
poppy, the name and rank of a fallen loved one and a message of
commemoration
The crosses are laid out in regimental order by the Royal British
Legion. Among the crosses, the occasional crescent or Star of David
serves as a reminder Muslims and Jews have also laid down their lives
for peace and freedom. The Queen Mother first opened the Field of
Remembrance in 1936. For many years, she laid a cross in memory of her
brother who was killed in World War I. A Field of Remembrance was also
opened in Cardiff by First Minister Rhodri Morgan and World War II
veteran Sir Tasker Watkins, 85, who won the Victoria Cross in 1944 as
a major in the Welsh Regiment and later became a privy counsellor,
lord justice of appeal and deputy chief justice of England.
Armistice Day has been a tradition in Britain since King George V
issued a proclamation in 1919 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 1918, on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, the guns
fell silent and World War I ended. Troops stationed in Iraq were among
an estimated 45 million British people who observed the two-minute silence.
At Oxfordshire County Hall, a short Armistice Day service was held
before the opening of an inquest into the deaths of three Black Watch
soldiers killed in a suicide bomb attack in Iraq on Thursday last
week. In Southport, Merseyside, the family, friends and colleagues of
Major Matthew Titchener, 32, a Royal Military Police officer killed
during an ambush on his jeep in Basra in August last year, attended a
ceremony to unveil his name on the war memorial in his home town.
Hope that some of you found this of interest
My Thanks to all who served.
Leon (too young to have served, but both parents did).
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