A Field of Poppies

 On the Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Month the treaty to end World War I was signed.

This post has been published automatically so I could still pay my respects to those who have died defending the innocent. I think it’s amazing that people want to be able to defend strangers, to defend their friends, to defend their family and to defend their country. For two minutes, on the second Sunday of November, Britain will fall silent to pay respects to those who have died in the name of their country. I too will be paying my tributes at my local cenotaph, as the Queen will be paying hers as Whitehall, London.

The First Two Minute Silence in London (11th November 1919) as reported in the Manchester Guardian, 12th November 1919.

'The first stroke of eleven produced a magical effect.
The tram cars glided into stillness, motors ceased to cough and fume, and stopped dead, and the mighty-limbed dray horses hunched back upon their loads and stopped also, seeming to do it of their own will. Someone took off his hat, and with a nervous hesitancy the rest of the men bowed their heads also.

Here and there an old soldier could be detected slipping unconsciously into the posture of 'attention'. An elderly woman, not far away, wiped her eyes, and the man beside her looked white and stern. Everyone stood very still... The hush deepened. It had spread over the whole city and become so pronounced as to impress one with a sense of audibility. It was a silence which was almost pain... And the spirit of memory brooded over it all.'

"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."
      -Fourth Stanza from the poem For the Fallen

With all respects,
Kris.