Immaculate silence... the finest tribute to our fallen
Thousands of people joined members of the Royal family at the Cenotaph yesterday to mark Armistice Day. Joe Shute reports
Acentury ago, as news of the Armistice spread, pandemonium ensued on the streets of London. Yesterday, as Big Ben chimed to mark the 11th hour and a field gun blasted from Horse Guards Parade, there was nothing but immaculate silence in honour of the Glorious Dead.
These are the solemn traditions that over the course of a century have become woven into the fabric of how a nation remembers. That silence, the Prince of Wales said in a BBC interview before the ceremony, along with laying a wreath, is the greatest tribute we can pay to our fallen.
“We don’t have enough moments of silence to reflect, and above all it is a way of showing a special honour and appreciation to those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice,” the Prince said.
After the two-minute silence and sounding of the Last Post by the buglers of the Royal Marines, the Prince of Wales stepped forward to lay the first wreath at the foot of the Cenotaph on behalf of the Queen, who in 2017 relinquished the duty to her eldest son. Her Majesty watched proceedings from the central balcony of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, where the Duke of Edinburgh was a notable absentee.
The 97-year-old has missed the commemorations before, including in 1956, 1964, 1968 and 1999, when conducting royal business overseas. He came out of official retirement to attend last year’s Cenotaph service, but this year felt unable to attend.
In another break with tradition, and in a symbol of reconciliation, the Prince of Wales was followed by Frank-walter Steinmeier, the president of the republic of Germany, the first representative of his country ever to attend the Cenotaph.
Dressed in a black coat with a poppy pinned to his lapel, he placed a wreath in the colours of the German national flag at the foot of the memorial and stood with his head bowed.
He also played a central role in an
‘This is a way of showing a special honour and appreciation to those who paid the ultimate sacrifice’
evening service at Westminster Abbey. The president and the Queen laid a wreath of flowers at the Grave of the Unknown Warrior. and delivered a reading alongside the Prince of Wales. In a symbolic act he shook hands with the Queen at the Churchill memorial inside the abbey.
Elke Büdenbender, the president’s wife watched the Cenotaph scenes from a Foreign Office balcony accompanied by the Duchess of Sussex, who was similarly attending her first ever ceremony. The Duchess of Cambridge and Duchess of Cornwall flanked the Queen in the neighbouring balcony. Resplendent in their uniforms of the RAF, Royal Marines, Royal Navy and Royal Wessex Yeomanry, the Duke of Cambridge, Duke of Sussex, Duke of York and Earl of Wessex stepped forward simultaneously to lay their wreaths and crisply salute the Sir Edwin Lutyens-designed memorial. They were followed by the Princess Royal, Duke of Kent and Prince Michael of Kent. Theresa May, the Prime Minister, led Britain’s political leaders in laying a wreath. She was flanked by Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader.
The First World War poet Laurence Binyon’s line that “age shall not weary them” never rings more true than on Remembrance Sunday. At the conclusion of the official ceremony the Massed Bands of the Guards Division resumed and a line of veterans numbering more than 9,000-strong began the march along
Whitehall followed by ripples of applause. The oldest taking part in yesterday’s march past was 103-yearold Ron Freer, who described being present as “a huge honour”. The former Royal Artillery sergeant spent four years in a Japanese prisoner of war camp during the Second World War and suffered such severe malnutrition he was left blinded for life. He was three when his father, William, was killed at the Somme on Sept 4 1918, and Mr Freer travels out every year to the Dernancourt Communal Cemetery in France to lay a poppy wreath at his grave.
“When we go over to his grave in France we always leave him for a few moments to reflect and the tears come into his eyes,” said his son, David, who accompanied him on the march, pushing him in his wheelchair as part of a contingent from Blind Veterans UK.
Such is the scale of the slaughter of the First World War, with 886,345 British troops alone killed between 1914 and 1918, that thread of family history connected so many of those present yesterday to the conflict a century ago.
Not least, the Royal family themselves, as the Queen Mother’s brother Capt Fergus Bowes-lyon was killed at the Battle of Loos in 1915. Douglas Smith, 98, of the Queen’s Own Highlanders, lost his uncle Alec Smith at the Battle of Mons in 1914, the first major action of the British Expeditionary Force. Pte Douglas Smith later fought in the Second World War and was badly injured in the evacuation of Dunkirk before being captured.
“It is a pleasure and privilege to be able to take part and remember those who died in both wars,” he said. Capt Christopher Dorman-O’gowan, 72, marched in a contingent from the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers (All Ranks) Club in honour of his father, Maj Gen Eric Edward Dorman-smith, who served with 1st Battalion, Northumberland Fusiliers during the Great War and in June 1915 was awarded the Military Cross.
“Today I think of him, my regiment, the men of Northumberland who served, and of a whole generation who bled so we would not be dominated by Germany,” he said.
The traditional march past the Cenotaph finished at 12.30pm, when the bells of Big Ben rang out in unison with churches across the country to mark the spontaneous celebrations that greeted the end of the war in 1918. At the same time a second column of people numbering 10,000 began filing down Whitehall for the “People’s Procession”. Friends Lesley Swan and Alison Thornton were among those awarded a place on the ballot. They had travelled together from Aberdeen.
Ms Swan, 53, was marching in honour of Albert Hill, her great uncle, who was awarded a Victoria Cross for his actions during the Battle of the Somme, but lost both his brothers during the war. “It makes me so proud and honoured,” she said.
Ms Thornton, 58, was paying tribute to her grandfather, Lieut Hedworth Williamson Tait of 18th Battalion, Durham Light Infantry, who was just 19 when he lost his leg on the first day of the Battle of the Somme.
He was rescued three days later lying in a shell hole in No Man’s Land with a belt wrapped around his thigh as a tourniquet. Despite his injury, he served for the duration of the war monitoring observation balloons and was awarded numerous gallantry medals. “If he was here today, I would firstly like to say a very emotional ‘thank you’,” Ms Thornton said.
By the end of the march a carpet of scarlet poppy wreaths surrounded the Cenotaph. Each blood-red petal a symbol of the nation’s resolve to never forget.
This armistice centenary has primarily commemorated men who fought and died. But I was glad to spend last Friday evening in a village hall to remember a remarkable woman who helped thousands of such men.
The hall itself, in Mountfield, East Sussex, was built to commemorate Lady Mabelle Egerton. Her work was the subject of last Friday’s talk. A rich widow, she arrived in France in 1914 on the Sunbeam, the yacht of her father, Lord Brassey, to help deliver large amounts of medical supplies, which he had paid for, to the troops. She quickly noticed that the men wanted hot water to make tea and coffee. She duly set up the Rouen Station Coffee Shop in December 1914.
It was soon open round the clock, selling cheap refreshments to ablebodied servicemen at a small profit which allowed the wounded to get them free. It often cooked 1,000 eggs before 8am each day. The staff consisted of 30 or so well brought-up Englishwomen, all volunteers. Mabelle Egerton ran it herself from start to finish, which was not until April 1919.
Soldiers coming and going from the front referred to the café as “the best-run show in Europe”. May Cannan, a writer who served in it, remembered the mixture of men, “Indians … a tall, bearded Sikh … or a merry-eyed Gurkha”, and also the singing: “When the whistle blew [for the trains to depart], they stood to save the King and the roof came off the sheds. Two thousand men, maybe, singing – it was the most moving thing I knew. Then there’d be the thunder of the seats pushed back, the stamp of army boots on the pavé, and as the train went out they sang Tipperary.”
Another volunteer was Joan Ashton (later Whistler), a great friend of my family. She composed a Rouen Coffee Shop version of Kipling’s “If ”: “If you can cut four loaves to ev’ry minute,/ And only once a week cut off your thumb,/ If you can butter bread without a limit,/ Until your wrist (the buttering one) is numb” etc. “Sugared bun” rhymes with “Hun”.
Joan’s version ended: “If to your time, your will, you set no limit,/ But strive to do your best till War shall end,/ The shop’s not yours – nor anything that’s in it,/ But what is more, you’ll do your ‘bit’ my friend.”
At the end of the war, an anonymous soldier wrote to the shop in gratitude: “Before we went forth to battle or death, our last impression of women, home and love which came to us in a strange land was the Coffee Shop in Rouen.” The place was an extraordinary entrepot between peace and war. It would make a wonderful setting for a play, a film or even an opera, of the life and death of men seen through the lives of women. As in Greek tragedy, the most terrible events would be off-stage.
Jeff Fairburn is very rich but not, presumably, very happy. After fighting to keep his astonishing £75 million (originally an even more astonishing £110 million) bonus as chief executive of the builders Persimmon, he was pushed out of the company last week. Poor, rich Mr Fairburn is the human equivalent of the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI), the extraordinary “green” subsidy which brought down the Northern Ireland Executive. What started as a not completely mad idea became certifiably insane because it had no cap. The rewards became out of proportion to the wider benefit.
Mr Fairburn has not behaved elegantly but, as with RHI, the chief blame must go to government. Persimmon prospered mostly because it was guaranteed business at favourable rates by the main part of the Cameron government’s Help to Buy scheme, which subsidised equity loans for those buying new-build houses. The risk was on the taxpayer, not the company. Only with the most stupendous incompetence could Persimmon not have made windfall profits. And no one is suggesting that Mr Fairburn was incompetent. This story illustrates the essential pointlessness of Help to Buy. The scheme is nice for its immediate beneficiaries (both first-time buyers and Mr Fairburn). But since it guarantees purchase for the seller, its general effect is to increase house prices. Since it is the price of houses which make them almost unobtainable for those starting out, Help to Buy worsens the problem it seeks to solve.
Soldiers coming and going from the front referred to the Rouen Coffee Shop as ‘the best-run show in Europe’
Last week, this column chided Iain Duncan Smith, the former Conservative leader, for speaking on a platform of Mend, the radical Muslim organisation that wants everyone to think it speaks for British Muslims in general. Since then, Mr Duncan Smith has said firmly that he regrets appearing on the platform, and does not regard Mend as a force for “community cohesion”. Mend’s reaction is exactly as one might expect. It suggests that he is supporting “structural Islamophobia”. With a slight air of electoral menace, it says he is at odds with a mosque in his Chingford constituency.
This is a bluff. As the robustly non-sectarian Labour MP Khaled Mahmood has said, Mend cannot deliver the sort of block vote it purports to offer. It is rather as if Ukip were to claim that all MPS interested in supporting Leave should accept its view. A pinch of salt should be taken.