The Book of the Poppy by Chris McNab

Roman numerals (1914 – MCMXIV; 1919 – MCMXIX). Flags representing the various arms of service are displayed on either side of the monument.
    Since 1919, the Cenotaph has been the focus of the National Service of Remembrance, typically attended by key members of the government and royal family, plus visiting foreign dignitaries. At first it was very much a national event, concentrating exclusively on the British war dead, a focus refreshed by the additional third of a million dead suffered during the Second World War. Yet time has changed the perspective somewhat. In 1980, it was decided that Remembrance Sunday should properly be an act of remembrance for all those who have died in conflict, regardless of their nationality or the war in which they lost their lives.
    Of course, the Cenotaph is not the only national-level war memorial in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Unveiled on 12 October 2007, the Armed Forces Memorial near Lichfield in Staffordshire remembers the 16,000 British soldiers killed in conflicts post-1945. In Northern Ireland, Belfast has its own Cenotaph, set in a Garden of Remembrance. In Alexandra Gardens, Cardiff, there is the Welsh National War Memorial designed by Sir Ninian Comper and unveiled in June 1928. On the outer frieze of the colonnaded design is the Welsh inscription: I FEIBION CYMRU A RODDES EU BYWYD DROS EI GWLAD YN RHYFEL MCMXVIII, which translates as ‘To the sons of Wales who gave their lives for their country in the War 1918.’ In Scotland, the Scottish National War Memorial sits in the stunning location of Edinburgh Castle, towering over the city. Rolls of Honour inside the memorial list the names of nearly 200,000 Scottish people who died in the two world wars.
    Space does not allow us here to list many of the other great memorials that stretch throughout our land. The bulk of them date from the First World War years and the 1920s–30s, as the act of war-memorial building was not as enthusiastically embraced following the Second World War. (What we often find is that the names of those killed in the Second World War are added to the monument from the previous conflict.) Each ceremony on Remembrance Sunday has its own power and conviction, yet there are some features of the service that unite the country in its reflection upon conflict.
    SOME FAMOUS INTERNATIONAL WAR MEMORIALS

    POWERFUL WORDS, POWERFUL SILENCE
    In 1914, as the first dreadful casualty lists began to flow back to Britain from France and Belgium, the poet Robert Laurence Binyon composed a verse entitled ‘For the Fallen’, which was published in The Times in September. Although Binyon is likely to have been proud of the verse, he would have had little inkling at that early stage of the war how influential parts of the poem would become. In full, his poem read:

    For the Fallen

    With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
    England mourns for her dead across the sea.
    Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
    Fallen in the cause of the free.

    Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
    Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.
    There is music in the midst of desolation
    And a glory that shines upon our tears.

    They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
    Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
    They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
    They fell with their faces to the foe.

    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.

    They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
    They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
    They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
    They sleep beyond England’s foam.

    But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
    Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
    To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
    As the stars are known to the Night;

    As the stars that shall