Towns and cities come together to remember
A “HUMAN poppy” was yesterday the centenary centrepiece of an innovative tribute to the war dead.
More than 3,300 people donned coloured ponchos to create a worldrecord recreation of the flower that has come to symbolise the First World War.
They filled the market place of Cirencester, Gloucestershire, in a sea of colour – just one of thousands of commemorations across the country.
One of the first was a dawn commemoration in Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh, which was the first town in the UK to hear of the Armistice thanks to a radio operator intercepting a Morse code message from French Marshal Ferdinand Foch ordering a ceasefire at 11am.
Enniskillen learned of the end of the war two and a half hours before any other part of the kingdom – and the news spread like wildfire. In honour of this place in history more than 100 people gathered at the city’s castle before dawn, with the Last Post played on the bugle that sounded the charge of the 36th Ulster Division at the Battle of the Somme in 1916.
sacrifice
Northern Ireland Secretary Karen Bradley and Ireland’s deputy premier Simon Coveney attended a ceremony at the cenotaph at Belfast City Hall – but the city’s lord mayor, Sinn Fein’s Deirdre Hargey, refused to take part in events which “celebrate or attempt to legitimise British imperialism”.
Last night the names of all 134,712 Scots who died in the First World War were beamed on to the Scottish Parliament in a seven-hour