Anthem for Doomed Youth
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
-Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,-
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds
Wilfred Owen, MC 18th March, 1893 –4th November, 1918
Remembrance Day Background
British, Canadian, South African and ANZAC traditions include two minutes of silence at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month because that was the time (in Britain and France) when the armistice became effective. The two minutes recall World War I and World War II; before 1945 the silence was for one minute.
In the United Kingdom, although two minutes' silence is observed on 11th November itself, the main observance is on the 2nd Sunday of November, Remembrance Sunday. Ceremonies are held at local communities' War Memorials, usually organized by local branches of the Royal British Legion – an association for ex-servicemen. Typically poppy wreaths are laid, by local organisations including the Royal British Legion. ex-servicemen organisations, the Scouts, Guides, Boys' Brigade, St John Ambulance and the Salvation Army. "The Last Post" is played by a trumpeter or bugler, two minutes' silence is observed and broken by a trumpeter playing "Reveille". A minute's or two minutes' silence is also frequently incorporated into church services on that day. The main commemoration is held in Whitehall in central London, where the Queen, Prime Minister, and other senior political and military figures join with veterans to lay wreaths at the Cenotaph.
The Act of Remembrance includes the recitation of the Ode of Remembrance:
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
(a verse of the poem "For the Fallen" by Laurence Binyon)
In Canada the day is a holiday for federal government employees. However, for private business, provincial governments, and schools, its status varies by province. In Western and Atlantic Canada it is a general holiday. In Ontario and Quebec, it is not a general holiday, although corporations that are federally registered may make the day a full holiday, or instead designate a provincially-recognized holiday on a different day. Schools usually hold assemblies for the first half of the day or on the school day prior with various presentations concerning the remembrance of the war dead. Thousands of people gather near the National War Memorial in Ottawa. Among the crowd, war veterans pay their respects to fallen sailors, soldiers, and airmen.
In South Africa, the day is not a public holiday. Commemoration ceremonies are usually held on the following Sunday, at which, as with Australia and Britain, the "Last Post" is played by a bugler followed by the observation of a two-minute silence.
In Australia Remembrance Day is always observed on November 11th, although the day is not a public holiday. Services are held at 11:00 am at war memorials in suburbs and towns across the country, at which the "Last Post" is played by a bugler and a one-minute silence is observed. In recent decades, however, Remembrance Day has been partly eclipsed by ANZAC Day (25th April) as the national day of war commemoration.
Veterans Day is celebrated in the United States on the same date, but the function of the observance elsewhere is more closely matched by Memorial Day in May. In the United States and some other allied nations November 11 was formerly known as Armistice Day; in the United States it was given its new name after the end of World War II.
For Anglican and Roman Catholic Christians, there is a coincidental but appropriate overlap of Remembrance Day with the feast of St. Martin of Tours, a saint famous for putting aside his life as a soldier and turning to the peace-filled life of a monk. Statues or images associated with St. Martin are for this reason sometimes used as symbols of Remembrance Day in religious contexts (e.g., the Anglican Cathedral of Montreal).
Poppies are sold every year as an act of remembrance to fallen soldiers at war. The poppy's significance to Remembrance Day is a result of Canadian military physician John McCrae's poem "In Flanders Fields". The poppy emblem was chosen because of the poppies that bloomed across some of the worst battlefields of Flanders in World War I, their red colour an appropriate symbol for the bloodshed of trench warfare. A Frenchwoman by the name of Madame E. Guérin introduced the widely used artificial poppies given out today. Some people choose to wear white poppies, which emphasises a desire for peaceful alternatives to military action. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland the poppies are the flat Earl Haig variety with a leaf, and in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Scotland the poppies are curled at the petals with no leaf.