Origins of Remembrance Day

Origins of Remembrance Day

At 11am on 11 November 1918, the guns fell silent and hostilities ceased on the Western Front. After more than four years of warfare, Germany had accepted the terms of armistice and the war was over. This moment became associated with the remembrance of those who had died during the war.

It is generally stated that approximately 16 million people died during the First World War, of which military deaths accounted for 9.5 million, as many as one-third of these had no known grave.

Over 324,000 Australians served overseas during the First World War. Of these, nearly 60,000 died, 152,000 were wounded and 4,000 were taken prisoner.

On the first anniversary of the armistice, the main commemoration in London observed a two minutes’ silence at 11am. The silence was proposed by Australian journalist Edward Honey, and at about the same time, a similar proposal made by a South African statesman was endorsed by the British Cabinet. King George V requested all the British Empire to suspend normal activities for two minutes on the hour of the Armistice. The two minutes' silence was adopted, and it became a central feature of commemorations on Armistice Day.

After the end of the Second World War, the Australian and British governments changed the name from Armistice Day to Remembrance Day to commemorate all war dead.

In October 1997 the then Governor-General Sir William Dean issued a proclamation declaring 11 November as Remembrance Day. He urged all Australians to observe one minute’s silence on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month to remember the sacrifice of those who have died or suffered for Australia in wars and conflicts.

  

The red poppy

The Flanders poppy was immortalised by  Lieutenant-Colonel John McRae's poem In Flanders Fields (1915), and became the enduring symbol of the war for veterans and remembered as the only flower to bloom in the shattered landscape of no man's land. The artillery shells and shrapnel stirred up the earth in France and Belgium and exposed the seeds to the light they needed to germinate. According to folklore they were red from the blood of fallen soldiers.

McRae served as a medical officer with the first Canadian Contingent in France during the First World War. When in charge of a small first-aid post at the second battle if Ypres in 1915, he wrote the now very famous poem 

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.

The verses were apparently sent anonymously to the English magazine, Punch, which published them under the title, In Flanders’ Fields. Colonel McCrae died while on active duty in May 1918. 

The poppy soon became widely accepted throughout the allied nations as the flower of remembrance to be worn on Armistice Day. 

 

Banner image: Armistice Day, Sydney, 1918. AWM H11563.