Solemn Armistice Day Service in London

Manawatu Times, Volume 70, Issue 269, 14 November 1945, Page 8

Solemn Armistice Day Service in London

KING AT CENOTAPH. LONDON, Nov. 11. Thousands crowded Whitehall and watched the King and Princess Elizabeth place wreaths on the Cenotaph in Britain’s first peacetime armistice ceremony in six years. A third wreath was placed there on behalf of Queen Mary, who with the Queen, Princess Margaret, the Duchess of Kent and Princess Alice, stood at a Window of the Home Office overlooking the Cenotaph. Mr. Herbert Morrison, Mr. Churchill, members of the Cabinet, and the Chiefs of the Services also placed wreaths. Women, for the first time, appeared in the guard of honour from the three Services. The chimes of Big Ben and a single gun from the Horse Guards’ Parade gave the signal for the two minutes’ silence after which R.A.F. trumpeters sounded the “Last Post.” Strange incidents in the midst of the solemnity of the observances of Armistice Day are described in Reuter despatches. The Germans in Berlin for the first time observed Armistice Day with British and American troops amid the ruins of their city. Marshal Zhukov unveiled a striking memorial to the Russian dead constructed by Russian troops in the heart of Berlin. Russian artillery again awoke echoes of the war as the memorial was unveiled. Jews and Arabs stood side by side with British soldiers in a British war cemetery near Jerusalem, where a special prayer was offered for the peace of Palestine, “hallowed, sanctified land which has been defiled by man’s strife.”

General de Gaulle led an impressive ceremony in Paris. Torches lit at the cenotaphs in Paris and Brussels were flown to Mons, where the British Expeditionary Force first went into action in 1914.

Singapore had a military parade and a cathedral service.