Remembrance Sunday 2024 - We Will Remember Them

Today, Sunday 10 November, the National Service of Remembrance will be held at the Cenotaph on Whitehall, London, UK. The service will commemorate the contribution of British and Commonwealth military and civilian servicemen and women involved in the two World Wars and later conflicts.

We will remember them, and say thank you to the brave men and women,

past and present who fight to preserve our freedoms.

IN FLANDERS FIELDS

In Flanders' fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place: and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders' fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe;

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high,

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders' Fields.

After the First World War, the poppy was adopted as a symbol of Remembrance.

In the spring of 1915, shortly after losing a friend in Ypres, a Canadian doctor, Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae was inspired by the sight of poppies growing in battle-scarred fields to write the now famous poem called 'In Flanders Fields'.

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In 2024 a memorial installation to soldiers killed in the D Day landing on 6 June 1944 has been on display at the National Trust's Stowe Gardens. The silhouettes are designed to represent the military personnel from all the major services but in addition, two bespoke figures of nurses have been included. They are of Sister Mollie Evershed and Sister Dorothy Field who died while helping to save 75 men from the hospital ship SS Amsterdam which sank off the Normandy beaches on 7th August 1944.

Both were given posthumous commendation for their actions and are the only two women commemorated on the British Normandy Memorial. You can read and see more here

We Will Remember Them

Jan