REMEMBRANCE DAY – 2024
Remembrance Day 2024 Activities Royal Canadian Legion Brighton Branch 100
SUNDAY NOVEMBER 10
MONDAY NOVEMBER 11
ENSS Remembrance as Told by Gerald Banting – Retired Art Teacher – East Northumberland Secondary School
Remembrance Day cross that I made with the help of some great kids in the Art Club, the cross will be resurrected for the assembly on Friday.
In the photo, you will see the original version of the cross lower right side, and also the second version where we added the circle to make it a Celtic style cross to recognize the Armed Forces serving in the war in Afghanistan. You may also notice that there is a section that says “Peacekeeping” and also the years of the major conflicts of the 20th Century.
Canada repatriated the remains of an Unknown Soldier from France in May 2000 and laid them to rest at the National War Memorial in Ottawa. The idea originated as a millennium project of the Royal Canadian Legion and was coordinated through the government by Veterans Affairs Canada.
What the Unknown Soldier Represents
The Unknown Soldier was originally intended to represent all war dead whose remains had not been identified, a common problem along static First World War battlefields frequently churned by artillery and subsumed in mud. Since 1920, a single Unknown Soldier in London’s Westminster Abbey had represented the unidentified war dead of Canada and other Commonwealth states. The original ceremony, presided over by King George V, had included many of the British Empire’s Victoria Cross winners, and a group of 100 women, each of whom had lost their husband and all their sons during the war. France and the United States followed Great Britain’s example in 1921, as did numerous other countries in subsequent years. These tombs and memorials gradually assumed broader significance, becoming sites of memory and mourning for all war dead, and for civil ceremonies of broadly based remembrance instead of simple military commemoration.
Canada’s Unknown Soldier
In 1993, Australia marked the 75th anniversary of the end of the First World War by repatriating from France the remains of its own Unknown Soldier, the first Commonwealth country to have done so since 1920. He was buried in the Australian War Memorial’s Hall of Memory in Canberra.
Canada followed the Australian example in 2000 at the suggestion of the Royal Canadian Legion and other groups. A single set of remains was selected from among Canada’s 6,846 unknown soldiers of the First World War for return to Canada and re-interment at the National War Memorial in Ottawa. The Unknown Soldier ultimately came from a cemetery near Vimy Ridge and was flown home to lie in state in the Hall of Honour in the Centre Block of Parliament from 25 May to 28 May 2000, where tens of thousands filed past to pay their respects.
The Unknown Soldier was buried on the afternoon of 28 May 2000 in a nationally televised ceremony. The site has become an important focus of commemoration, especially in the national Remembrance Day service held at the National War Memorial on 11 November.
The Unknown Soldier: Approximately 20,000 men who served with the Canadian Expeditionary Force and in the Newfoundland Regiment have no known graves. Their names are recorded on the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing in Belgium, the Canadian National Vimy Memorial in France, or the Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Memorial in France. They are also commemorated by the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which adorns the base of the National War Memorial in Ottawa. The tomb, which was unveiled in 2000, contains the remains of a Canadian soldier who had initially been buried in a cemetery near Vimy Ridge, the site of Canada’s most iconic battle. His identity will never be known. The tomb is a national symbol of the sacrifices of individuals and the grief of families in all wars.
Many of the men with no known graves from the First World War were originally declared to be “missing,” which gave families hope that their loved ones might be found alive in hospitals or prisoner-of-war camps. In most cases, these hopes were not fulfilled. Some bodies could not be identified, while others were swallowed by battlefields that had been turned into quagmires by rain and artillery. When the remains of First World War soldiers are found today, attempts are made to identify the men from fragments of uniforms and equipment, and archival documents. The men are then buried in an appropriate cemetery with full Honours. It is common to see headstones in First World War cemeteries that note only unit affiliations or some simple inscription about the unknown man buried beneath. Such memorials remind us of the families who never had the small comfort of knowing how their loved ones died or whether they had been properly buried.
A MOVING RECOLLECTION OF WHAT ALL OUR TROOPS WENT THROUGH ON D-DAY, CANADIAN, AMERICAN AND BRITISH… LEST WE FORGET
The Unknown Soldier
On November 7th, 1920, in strictest secrecy, four unidentified British bodies were exhumed from temporary battlefield cemeteries at Ypres, Arras, the Aisne and the Somme.
None of the soldiers who did the digging were told why.
The bodies were taken by field ambulance to GHQ at St-Pol-Sur-Ternoise near Arras. Once there, the bodies were draped with the Union Flag.
Sentries were posted and Brigadier L.J. Wyatt and Lt. Col. E.A.S. Gell selected one body at random. The other three were reburied. A French Honour Guard was selected and stood by the coffin overnight of the chosen soldier overnight.
On the morning of November 8th, a specially designed coffin made of oak from the grounds of Hampton Court Palace arrived and the Unknown Warrior was placed inside. On top was placed a crusaders sword and a shield, personally selected by King George V from the Royal Collection, on which was inscribed:
“A British Warrior who fell in the GREAT WAR 1914-1918 for King and Country”.
On the 9th of November, the Unknown Warrior was taken by horse-drawn carriage through the sound of tolling bells and bugle calls by the French 8th Infantry Regiment to the quayside. There, he was saluted by Marshal Foch and loaded onto HMS Verdun bound for Dover. The coffin stood on the deck covered in wreaths, surrounded by the French Honour Guard.
Upon arrival at Dover, the Unknown Warrior was met with a nineteen gun salute – something that was normally only reserved for Field Marshals. A special train had been arranged and he was then conveyed to Victoria Station, London.
He remained there overnight and, on the morning of the 11th of November, was finally taken to Westminster Abbey. The casket was placed onto a gun carriage of N Battery, Royal Horse Artillery and drawn by six black horses through immense and silent crowds. As the cortege set off, a further Field Marshal’s salute was fired. The cortege was then followed by the King, the Royal Family, and ministers of state to Westminster Abbey, where the casket was borne into the West Nave of the Abbey flanked by a guard of honour of one hundred recipients of the Victoria Cross.
The guests of honour were a group of about one hundred women. They had been chosen because they had each lost their husband and all their sons in the war. “Every woman so bereft who applied for a place got it”.
The coffin was then interred in the far western end of the Nave, only a few feet from the entrance, in soil brought from each of the main battlefields, and covered with a silk pall. Servicemen from the armed forces stood guard as tens of thousands of mourners filed silently past.
The grave was then capped with a black Belgian marble stone (the only tombstone in the Abbey on which it is forbidden to walk) featuring this inscription, composed by Herbert Edward Ryle, Dean of Westminster, engraved with brass from melted down wartime ammunition.
Beneath this stone rests the body
Of a British warrior
Unknown by name or rank
Brought from France to lie among
The most illustrious of the land
And buried here on Armistice Day
11 Nov: 1920, in the presence of
His Majesty King George V
His Ministers of State
The Chiefs of his forces
And a vast concourse of the nation
Thus are commemorated the many
Multitudes who during the Great
War of 1914 – 1918 gave the most that
Man can give life itself
For God
For King and country
For loved ones home and empire
For the sacred cause of justice and
The freedom of the world
They buried him among the kings because he
Had done good toward God and toward
His house
Around the main inscription are four New Testament quotations:
The Lord knoweth them that are his (top; 2 Timothy 2:19)
Unknown and yet well known, dying and behold we live (side; 2 Corinthians 6:9)
Greater love hath no man than this (side; John 15:13)
In Christ shall all be made alive (base; 1 Corinthians15:22)
A year later, on 17 October, 1921 the Unknown Warrior was given the United States’ highest award for valour, the Medal of Honour, from the hand of Gen. John J Pershing; it hangs on a pillar close to the tomb. On 11 November, 1921 the American Unknown Soldier was reciprocally awarded the Victoria Cross.
The idea of the unknown warrior was thought of by Reverend David Railton who had served on the front line during the Great War. He had seen a grave marked by a rough cross, which bore the pencil-written legend ‘An Unknown British Soldier’. The Union Flag he had used as an altar cloth whilst at the front was the one that had been draped over the coffin. He had written to the Dean of Westminster Herbert Ryle in 1920 proposing that an unidentified British soldier from the battlefields in France be buried with due ceremony in Westminster Abbey “amongst the kings” to represent the 517,773 combatants who had been killed but whose bodies had not been identified. The idea was strongly supported by the Dean and Prime Minister, David Lloyd George.
THIS is the reason we wear poppies.
We remember, with humility, the ultimate sacrifices that were made, not just in this war but in every war and conflict where our service personnel have fought to ensure the liberty and freedoms that we now take for granted.
Every year on the 11th of November, we remember the Unknown Warrior.
At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember them.
Our Remembrance of those we lost …. Our Canadian, British and American Comrades
Lest We Forget…
THE POPPY TREE
Remembrance Day Highlights below are produced by Comrade Dave Wyndham
Click arrow down to review pages…
80th Anniversary of the Liberation of the Netherlands
In the final months of the Second World War, Canadian forces were given the important and deadly task of liberating the Netherlands from Nazi occupation . . . from September 1944 to April 1945, the First Canadian Army fought German forces on the Scheldt estuary opening the Port of Antwerp for allied use and then cleared northern and western Netherlands of Germans, allowing food and other relief to reach millions of desperate people.
Today, Canada is fondly remembered by the Dutch for ending their oppression under the Nazis.
Antwerp As the allies sought another way into Germany, they needed a large harbour through which to ship supplies to their advancing armies. The Belgian city of Antwerp, one of Europe’s biggest ports, had already been liberated, but the 70-kilometre long estuary of the Scheldt River, which connected Antwerp to the sea, was still held by the Germans. the task of clearing the estuary of enemy forces was assigned to the First Canadian Army.
Battle of the Scheldt The First Canadian Army was Canada’s principal fighting arm in northwest Europe during the war. A powerful strike force under the command of Canadian General Harry Crerar, it included the 2nd Canadian corps, as well as large contingents of British, Polish, American and Dutch infantry and armoured troops. Since the Battle of Normandy in the summer of 1944, the army had formed the left flank of the allied advance towards Germany with the First Canadians liberating ports and cities along the channel coast of France and Belgium. Upon reaching the Netherlands, the First Canadian Army was ordered to clear the banks of the wide, multi-channeled Scheldt River between the North Sea and the Port of Antwerp. It was a treacherous landscape for attacking troops to operate in . . . flat, soggy, sometimes flooded land, situated below sea level and enclosed by a series of dykes. Under the leadership of Canadian Lieutenant-General Guy Simonds (who had temporarily replaced General Crerar), Canadian and British soldiers fought a series of fierce battles through October and early November, including amphibious assaults from small boats against German defenses along the estuary. Aside from the use of boats, the movement of men, tanks and other equipment was often restricted to narrow roadways along the top of dykes, under frequent German fire. The First Canadian Army lost nearly 13,000 men killed, wounded or missing during the Scheldt fighting, including more than 6,300 Canadians. However, by 8 November the estuary and its large islands had been secured. The river was then cleared of mines, and on 28 November the first convoy of allied cargo ships entered the Port of Antwerp.
Battle of the Rhineland The first Canadian Army spent the winter patrolling its portion of the front line in the Netherlands and France skirmishing occasionally with the enemy, while American forces in Belgium fought back against German’s surprise attack in the Ardennes forest. In February 1945, the allied advance in northwest Europe resumed, with a huge offensive to drive the enemy across the Rhine River. It fell to the First Canadian Army to clear the area between the Maas and Rhine Rivers, pushing German forces eastward over the Rhine. In March the first Canadian army was reinforced by various allied units, including the 1st Canadian corps, and transferred north from the battlegrounds of Italy. For the first time in history, two Canadian army corps were fighting together. And with an international strength now of more than 450,000 men, the First Canadians became the largest army ever commanded by a Canadian officer. In late March, as other allied armies crossed the Rhine into Germany, the First Canadian Army began rooting out German forces in the remainder of the Netherlands. The Canadians faced stiff fighting in places, and were also hampered by the broken roads, bridges and other infrastructure destroyed by the fleeing Germans, who blew up some of the dykes in the western Netherlands, flooding parts of the countryside. The Canadians were greeted as heroes as they liberated small towns and major cities, including Amsterdam, Rotterdam and the Hague. Millions of Dutch had suffered terribly during the harsh “hunger winter” of 1945, and Canadian troops facilitated the arrival of food, fuel and other aid supplies to a population in the midst of starvation. General Charles Foulkes, commander of the 1st Canadian corps, accepted the surrender of German forces in the Netherlands on 5 May. Two days later, Germany formally surrendered and the war in Europe came to an end.
More than 7,600 Canadian soldiers, sailors and airmen died fighting in the Netherlands. they are buried today in official war cemeteries across the country. The largest, Groesbeek Canadian War Cemetery near the city of Nijmegen, holds the graves of more than 2,300 Canadians.
LEST WE FORGET