Zululanders commemorate Armistice Day
MOTH Shellholes affiliated to the Zululand MOTH Dugout honoured the fallen during an Armistice Day parade at the Cenotaph in Empangeni on Sunday.
The parade marked the end of the First World War a century ago.
It also commemorated those who died in the Second World War and Border War.
Also known as Poppy Day or Remembrance Day, Armistice Day is commemorated on the Sunday closest to 11 November.
This year marked the end of hostilities of World War I in 1918.
Poppies were worn for the first time at the 1921 commemorations.
First commemoration service
In South Africa one of the first instances where the fallen were honoured was at a church service in Cape Town.
The city was in mourning after the publication of South Africa’s first casualty list from Word War 1 in 1916.
A local businessman, JA Eggar, proposed that the congregation at a church service should observe a minute’s silence to honour the fallen.
Two minutes silence
South African author, politician and mining financier, Sir Percy Fitzpatrick, is credited with the idea of a two-minute silence.
His eldest son, Major Percy Nugent George Fitzpatrick, was killed in action in Beaumitz, France, in December 1917.
On 27 October 1919
Sir Percy, through Lord Milner, the former High Commissioner for South Africa, proposed to King George V that a moment of silence be observed annually on 11 November, in honour of the dead of World War 1.
On 17 November, King George proclaimed that ‘at the hour when Armistice came into force, the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, there may be for the brief space of two minutes a complete suspension of all our normal activities.
The first minute of the silence is in thanksgiving for those who survived, while the second is to remember the fallen.
In Flanders Fields
In the spring of 1915, shortly after losing a friend in Ypres, a Canadian doctor, Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, was inspired by the sight of poppies growing in battlescarred fields to write a now famous poem called ‘In Flanders Fields’.
After the First World War, the poppy was adopted as a symbol of remembrance.