Remembrance Day, Tuesday 11 November 2014

07 November 2014

This year 11 November marks the 96th anniversary of the Armistice which ended the First World War (1914–18). Each year on this day Australians observe one minute’s silence at 11 am in memory of those who died or suffered in all wars and armed conflicts.

The Remembrance Day National Ceremony includes a formal wreathlaying and will be attended by many high-level dignitaries and diplomats, as well as students from each state and territory representing the youth of Australia. Australia’s Federation Guard and the Band of the Royal Military College will be on parade. The ceremony will run from 10.15 am to 12 noon.

Remembrance Day tradition: why is this day special to Australians?

At 11 am on 11 November 1918 the guns of the Western Front fell silent after more than four years of continuous warfare. Between August and November the allied armies had driven the German invaders back, having inflicted heavy defeats upon them. In November the Germans called for an armistice in order to secure a peace settlement. They accepted the allied terms of unconditional surrender.

The 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month has attained a special significance in the postwar years. The moment when hostilities ceased on the Western Front became universally associated with the remembrance of those who had died in the war. This, the first modern world conflict, had brought about the mobilisation of over 70 million people and left between nine and 13 million dead, perhaps as many as one-third of them with no known grave.

On the first anniversary of the Armistice in 1919 two minutes’ silence was instituted as part of the main commemorative ceremony at the new Cenotaph in London. The silence was proposed by Australian journalist Edward Honey, who was working in Fleet Street. At about the same time a South African statesman made a similar proposal to the British Cabinet, which endorsed it. King George V requested all the people of the British Empire to suspend normal activities for two minutes on the hour of the Armistice, “which stayed the worldwide carnage of the four preceding years and marked the victory of Right and Freedom”. The two minutes’ silence was popularly adopted and it became a central feature of commemorations on Armistice Day.

In 1920 the Armistice commemoration was given added significance when it became a funeral: the remains of two unknown soldiers were returned from the battlefields of the Western Front and interred with full military honours in Westminster Abbey in London and at the Arc de Triumph in Paris. Within a week more than one million people had paid their respects at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in London. Most other allied nations adopted the tradition of entombing unknown soldiers over the following decade.

After the end of the Second World War the Australian and British governments changed the name of the Armistice ceremony to Remembrance Day. The day would now commemorate all war dead, and not just those from the First World War.