Remembrance Day

  

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 of 'For the Fallen' by Laurence Binyon (1869 - 1943)

The British Remembrance Day is always held on the 11 November. This is the day that World War One ended in 1918, when the armistice was signed in Compiègne, Northern France, at 5am. Six hours later at 11am the fighting stopped. The period of silence was first proposed by a Melbourne journalist, Edward George Honey, in a letter published in the London Evening News on 8 May 1919, which subsequently came to the attention of King George V. On 7 November, 1919, the king issued a proclamation which called for a two-minute silence on the 11th hour of the 11th day on the 11th Month. The nearest Sunday to the 11th is called Remembrance Sunday.

The photograph above on the left shows an original wooden Flanders cross of 1915 for Lieut. K. G. Ford, which hangs in the church at Ashill. Out of all Norfolk's 700-odd parishes, only one got back all the boys it sent to the War - Ovington, near Watton. In every other parish, memorials remain to remember the dead.