UK marks socially distant Armistice Day amid Covid pandemic
Armistice Day #ArmisticeDay
Wearing face coverings and standing apart, people across the country observed a two-minute silence on Wednesday to mark Armistice Day against the backdrop of a pandemic that has caused well over a million deaths globally.
At Westminster Abbey the silence was led by the Prince of Wales, the Duchess of Cornwall, the prime minister and leader of the opposition.
Thousands who normally would have joined ceremonies of commemoration at memorials in cities, towns and villages in the four nations of the UK instead marked the occasion at home.
A special exemption to the current Covid restrictions was granted to allow a service at Westminster Abbey marking 100 years to the day since the body of the unknown soldier was laid to rest.
As well as Boris Johnson and Sir Keir Starmer, the congregation included the defence secretary, Ben Wallace, and leading figures from the armed forces.
The poet laureate Simon Armitage read a poem commemorating the anniversary, honouring the symbolic “son we lost”, “a soul without name or rank or age or home”.
The Bed describes the fallen soldier’s journey, from being “broken and sleeping rough in a dirt grave” to being buried “among drowsing poets and dozing saints”.
Gallery: The 100th anniversary of The Tomb of The Unknown Warrior (Mirrorpix)
It ends: “All this for a soul, without name or rank or age or home, because you are the son we lost, and your rest is ours.”
The unknown soldier was an unidentified British serviceman whose body was brought back from northern France in 1920 and laid to rest at the west end of the abbey’s nave to represent all those who lost their lives in the first world war but whose place of death was unknown or whose body was never found.
In his homily at the service, Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, told the limited congregation that “sacrifice is not only in a time of war”.
This year, sacrifices had been made by millions of people as a result of the Covid pandemic, he said. “People are putting aside all they hold dear … They may be anonymous, but their actions are glorious.”
Prince Charles read a lesson wearing a face covering. Prayers were said for “each individual grieved over, for every future cut short”.
At the Cenotaph on Whitehall, a small closed ceremony was held. Lance Sergeant Stuart Laing from the First Battalion Welsh Guards performed the Last Post and Reveille on a bugle recovered from the mud of the Somme battlefield in 1915.
Commemorations were also held in Edinburgh, Belfast and Cardiff. In Liverpool, soldiers helping with the mass Covid testing at the Arena convention centre paused during their work.
Earlier, more than 100 poppy wreaths were transported by rail to Paddington station, in London, for Armistice Day. The Poppies to Paddington operation involved nine trains travelling across the Great Western Railway (GWR) network from more than 60 stations, including Penzance, Hereford, Paignton, Swansea, Taunton, Worcester Shrub Hill, Cheltenham Spa, Bristol Temple Meads and Oxford.
On arrival at Paddington, the wreaths were placed at a war memorial on Platform 1 in time for a remembrance service at 11am.
Before the 11am ceremonies, environmental campaigners from Extinction Rebellion staged a protest at the Cenotaph, unveiling a banner which read: “Honour Their Sacrifice, Climate Change Means War.”
Sharp winds scissor and scythe those plains.
And because you are broken and sleeping rough
in a dirt grave, we exchange the crude wooden cross
for the hilt and blade of a proven sword;
to hack through the knotted dark of the next world,
yes, but to lean on as well at a stile or gate
looking out over fens or wealds or fells or wolds.
That sword, drawn from a king’s sheath,
fits a commoner’s hand, and is yours to keep.
And because frost plucks at the threads
of your nerves, and your bones stew in the rain,
bedclothes of zinc and oak are trimmed
and tailored to fit. Sandbags are drafted in,
for bolstering limbs and pillowing dreams,
and we throw in a fistful of battlefield soil:
an inch of the earth, your share of the spoils.
The heavy sheet of stone is Belgian marble
buffed to a high black gloss, the blanket
a flag that served as an altar cloth. Darkness
files past, through until morning, its head bowed.
Molten bullets embroider incised words.
Among drowsing poets and dozing saints
the tall white candles are vigilant sentries
presenting arms with stiff yellow flames;
so nobody treads on the counterpane,
but tiptoeing royal brides in satin slippers
will dress and crown you with luminous flowers.
All this for a soul
without name or rank or age or home, because you
are the son we lost, and your rest is ours.