On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, we remember them.Â
The act of remembrance began with the Armistice, the first day of peace after World War I. This was the first global war, with losses on all sides, and when it was over, the world wasnât the same. Families buried their loved ones and countries rebuilt, to heal, after the destructive horrors of war.Â
From 1919, the nation came together for two minutes of silence on November 11th at 11am, to honour the sacrifices of the fallen, remembering their brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, sons, daughters and friends.Â
The country continued to act in solidarity, to support those who had been affected by the âGreat Warâ. The poppy has become an international symbol of remembrance across the United States, Canada, and Europe. In 1915, whilst still in service, Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae wrote the famous poem âIn Flanders Fieldâ. He took his inspiration from the war-torn Western Front, a land ravaged by constant bombardment of artillery fire and explosions, and the red poppy survived. With freshly churned earth, the Flanders poppy thrived, in their thousands, across the battlefield.Â
In Flanders Field the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,Â
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders Field
John McCrae, âIn Flanders Fieldâ
American humanitarian, Moina Michale, responded to the poem after the war, âAnd now Torch and poppy red, we wear in honour of our dead.â She commissioned the poppy to be made a symbol of remembrance internationally, and with the help of Anna Guerin and Earl Haig they made the poppy appeal. Their aim was to raise funds to assist those affected by the war. For Anna Guerin, this was the war orphans of France. Earl Haig founded the Royal British Legion, which is still dedicated to aiding war veterans and the Armed Forces community today.Â
The RBL founded a factory dedicated to the production of artificial poppies; they employed war veterans, and the factory still runs one hundred years later. In 1921, the first poppy appeal commissioned nine million poppies; they sold out, raising ÂŁ106,000 in the UK (that would equate to around ÂŁ6.5 million today). Other poppies have also been designed; the white poppy symbolises peace without violence, and purple poppies commemorate the animals that died in service. In 2024, 32 million poppies and 127,000 wreaths were distributed across the nation by 50,000 volunteers, raising over ÂŁ51.4 million. Â
In 2025, we will still come together as a nation to commemorate the Armed Forces community. On the second Sunday of November, notional services across the country are attended to observe two minutes of silence but is this national service losing its meaning to the modern generation?
Some believe that what we do now is the bare minimum of support we could be showing our Armed Forces, others believe that with the end of WWII being nearly eighty years ago, we should leave it in the past and move on. Personally, I donât believe that we have learnt enough. Â
World War one was coined âthe war to end all warsâ. It was believed that the level of devastation would bring about a new age of zero conflict. However, the results of WWI would directly lead to the rise in hostility and the declaration of WWII only twenty years later. World War II also brought out its own teachable slogan – âNever Againâ. It aimed to say that the horrors of the Holocaust would never take place again. We have not learnt –Â sure, we teach about the events in school, and the media industry has made billions on films and series like 1917, Dunkirk, Darkest Hour, 37 Days to War, Hacksaw Ridge, and War Horse. The stories we tell are important, they are influential, and should be learnt from and remembered. We said, âNever Againâ, but I donât think we meant it. The idea of extreme racial superiority has been a stain on humanityâs history, from colonialism to segregation to the Holocaust, and for what? Millions of innocent people died for being âwrongâ: the wrong religion, the wrong race, the wrong sexuality, the wrong nationality. We are starting to see a rise in this ideology again; or maybe it never really went away. Maybe we just glamorised our time in the name of modernisation. Conflicts over religion, systemic racism, attacks on queer people and their rights to medical care and marriage. We still perpetuate the hateful ideologies that people are more superior than others when in fact we are just all people. Simple, different, individual people.Â
I would like to take this moment to thank those who served and continue to serve in the Armed Forces. In the silence on the eleventh hour, even if itâs just a moment of reflection, a pause of silence in our very loud world, to remember a loved one, take a moment to be still. We remember them.
Editor: Grace Lees