November 11th Armistice Day, Veterans Day, Remembrance Sunday

Since the end of WWI the Armistice Day has been an important occasion. Two minutes silence is observed.

You can honour the dead, honour their endurance, feel sad at the sacrifice of their life, honour the survivors, and pray for peace.

Armistice Day in London has parades and wreath laying in central London. 

Also wreaths in cemeteries all over the UK and wreaths placed on public memorials. For example, the mayor of Harrow lays a wreath on the grave of Leafe Robinson in the borough of Harrow.

The Australians and New Zealanders have their commemorations of the Anzacs - Australian and New Zealand. That is every year, in late April.

Many other groups gather together for memorials.

In London a Jewish group honours those who died. Ancestry tracing has me in its thrall.

All the military records websites keep sending me updates. They notify me of traces of people with the same surname in newly acquired records from the army, navy and other services around the world.

My mother's first husband died at Gallipoli in a plane which was shot down. My mother had the letter informing her of his death. She needed to produce it to re-marry, to prove she was a widow and not committing bigamy. I was born to her second husband. I was only able to trace the story after both my parents died.

War museums have their own exhibitions.

More commemorations are held on Rememberance Sunday.

The USA call Nov 11th Veterans Day. Slightly different emphasis.

Places to visit

UK

The Cenotaph, London

National Arboretum, Staffordshire.

10-5pm, free but donations appreciated. Restaurant. Parking may be full and places may need to be booked at major events such as at services on Armistice Day.

Useful Websites

UK

Association of Jewish Ex Service

https://www.ajex.org.uk/

National Arboretum

https://www.thenma.org.uk/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Memorial_Arboretum#

UK and Worldwide

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armistice_of_11_November_1918

USA

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ushome/index.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_Day

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Gathering_of_Jewish_Holocaust_Survivors_and_their_Descendants

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11416231/What-time-Remembrance-Day-two-minutes-silence-Armistice-Day-honoured.html

See sculptures At The National Arboretum, from the Burma Railway to the Christmas Truce - memorials and hope from wartime and deaths and survivors worldwide

Berlin Airlift Memorial. A plane shooting into the sky.

My mother's first husband was missing presumed dead from a plane over El Alamein the year before the famous battle which was a turning point in Allied success in World War two .

Burma Railway Memorial. The rails.

Association of Jewish Ex Service Men and Women. Part of the six point star of David, which Moslems call the seal of Solomon, broken but letting in the light for future generations. I am the daughter of my mother's second husband. I don't know whether my mother's first husband was Jewish. They married in a register office. His surname was Godfrey. My mother said he went to St Paul's school. I phoned the famous, grand St Paul's school. They had no record of him, but suggested he might have attended St Paul's school in London's East End.

Shot At Dawn

A member of a later generation of the family of a young man shot at dawn campaigned for a pardon for all the young men shot at  dawn. For cowardice. But in later generations they might have been diagnosed with shell shock. Especially as many of them were under age teenagers who had lied about their age to get into the army.

Here is my favourite memorial.

All kinds of bereavement affecting British nationals, as well as other people worldwide, are recorded.

Stillbirth and Neonatal Death.  In wartime and peacetime.

Here is my favourite memorial.

Christmas Truce. You may recall the WW1 story of how the troops on both sides played Christmas music and then went out into the no man's land between them to play a game of football. This happened not just in one place. Afterwards the troops declined to start firing their guns again. The commanders had to order them to restart the firing.

 You can look up an A to Z of events, people and places commemorated. These include:

People

Shot at dawn statue from WW1 

A star like a window cut from a stone wall for the Jewish ex service men and women.

Events & Places

Gallipoli

Useful Websites

https://www.thenma.org.uk/visit-us/what's-here/the-memorials/list-of-memorials

Three things worth going to see in Lichfield: the Birthplace Museum of Johnson, the statue of biographer Boswell, the Darwin museum - and three spires cathedral

Samuel Johnson.

What an extraordinary life he led. He was in and out of debt all his life. He married an older woman who was widowed, a wealthy woman. (Like Disraeli did later.) He loved Lichfield but left for London and travelled.He was not the first or the only person to compile a dictionary.

he famously said:

He who is tired of London is tired of life.

• The only end of writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.
• A Review of Soame Jenyns' A Free Enquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil, published in the first volume of Miscellaneous and Fugitive Pieces (London, 1774), p. 23
• He who praises everybody praises nobody.
• Johnson's Works (1787), vol. XI, p. 216; This set included the Life of Samuel Johnson by Sir John Hawkins
• I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.
• Quoted in the "Apophthegms, Sentiments, Opinions and Occasional Reflections" of Sir John Hawkins (1787-1789) in Johnsonian Miscellanies (1897), vol. II, p. 6, edited by George Birkbeck Hill
• A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek.
• Quoted in the "Apophthegms, Sentiments, Opinions and Occasional Reflections" of Sir John Hawkins (1787-1789) in Johnsonian Miscellanies (1897), vol. II, p. 11, edited by George Birkbeck Hill
• . Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement.
• Nothing ... will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must be first overcome.
  • Chapter 6
• To a poet nothing can be useless.
• Chapter 10
• No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.
• March 1759, p. 97
• It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. 
• Hell is paved with good intentions.
  • April 14, 1775
  • I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works.
  • It is strange that there should be so little reading in the world, and so much writing. People in general do not willingly read, if they can have any thing else to amuse them.
    • May 1, 1783, p. 513

Attributed to him after he died:

What are the landmarks and places to visit in Lichfield? 

1 The highest is the triple spires of the Cathedral. 

2 The first landmark find and see is the statue of Boswell.

3 My top attraction is the museum of Samuel Johnson who compiled the dictionary in 1755. Johnson is also famous for two quotations.

He who is tired of London is tired of life.

Worth seeing, but not worth going to see.

But there is a fourth must see museum. Darwin, grandfather of Charles

Just 6 miles outside the city is the National Arboretum, but full of statues and memorials to people and places from various wars.

 Useful Websites

https://www.visitlichfield.co.uk/attractions/samuel-johnson-birthplace-museum

Virtual tour of the Museum

https://www.samueljohnsonbirthplace.org.uk/Virtual_Tour_6133.aspx

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Samuel_Johnson

National Memorial Arboretum

https://www.thenma.org.uk/visit-us/what's-here/the-memorials/list-of-memorials

Remembrance War, Peace, Pacifist Memorials to visit UK, Europe, USA & Worldwide & Pacifist Memorial

Armistice Day has been observed since 1919. Traditionally at the 11th hour, on the 11th day of the 11th month. Nowadays you can hear the haunting sounds of the Last Post play every night at the Menin Gate in Belgium. Visit graves and memorials to the Great War battles. Glance at plaques as you pass through London underground and overground railway stations. Worldwide, join a jolly tour plunging into the water on a boat which was used in the D-day landings, as I did in New York and Philadelphia. Or simply join me touring the world as an armchair traveller through time.

Permanent Memorials
UK
Town Memorials
Most towns and village have war memorials, often in the middle of the town square. I can't list them all because there are more than 100,000.
www.greatwar.co.uk/organizations/war-memorials-trust

School Memorials
Lists of the fallen are on the walls of schools, such as Harrow School.

Transport Memorials
A memorial to members of London Transport is on Baker Street station. Take the Bakerloo south. Another memorial is at the arched entrance-exit of Waterloo station, Britain's biggest station.

London
Cenotaph, Whitehall, London.

London landmarks include the Polish war memorial. Go along the Western Avenue from the Target Roundabout. It's near RAF Northolt, which probably explains the location.

Museums:
RAF museum, Hendon.
Imperial War Museum, London. (This is where the ceramic poppies (originally placed around the Tower of London) will end up after touring.
Churchill War rooms, under London.

England
National Arboretum, Staffordshire, UK. Includes the Shot At Dawn memorial.
www.thenma.org.uk

Scotland
Edinburgh, monument at Edinburgh's Waverley Station. In 2014 a plaque was unveiled at Glasgow's Central Station.

Wales
Welsh National War Memorial, Cardiff.

France
Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, under the Arc de Triomphe, Paris.

Belgium
Flanders
Menin Gate. Ypres.
In Flanders Fields museum, Ypres, Blegium.

Temporary - Armchair Travellers View These Online
Red poppies, ceramic, surrounding the Tower of London. One poppy for each person who died, UK and colonial (Commonwealth?) countries. 2014 until November.

Recurrent Annual Events
Remembrance Armistice Day
London. Wreath laying by the British royal family and members of parliament at the Cenotaph in Whitehall. Two minutes of silence.
Parade.
Playing of last post.

Scotland
Edinburgh
Parade in Royal Mile on Remembrance Day.

Preserved Planes
Planes - spitfire at Bentley Priory, Stanmore, Middlesex.

Preserved Boats
You can take a tourist trip on WWII duck boats (amphibious vehicles on water and on land in WWIII) in the USA (New York and Philadelphia), London, and Singapore, and elsewhere, depending on weather.

Memorial in France.
Wikipedia.

Worldwide Sites
Australia: ANZAC memorial, Hyde Park, Sydney. Shrine of Remembrance, Melbourne.
Bangladesh
Brazil
Canada: Beechwood Cemetery, Ottawa.
China
Czeck Republic.
Egypt: El Alamein cemetery, along the coast west of Cairo.
Gibraltar. American monument (arch with names). Outdoors. Accessible all year.
India. Bombay (Mumbai). India Gate.
Israel. Yad Vashem.
Italy
Japan (controversial)
Malaysia: War memorial looks like the American flag raising Iwo Jima, created by the same sculptor.
Netherlands
New Zealand
Philippines: Manila American War Memorial and Cemetery.
Poland. Warsaw Ghetto. Auschwitz.
Portugal
Russia
Scotland: Spean Bridge Commando memorial.
Singapore: Kranji.
South Africa
Spain: Valley of the Fallen, near Madrid. (Valle de los Caidos.)
Turkey: Gallipoli.
UK Madingley American Cemetery, Cambridge. www.madingleyamericancemteryinfo
Runnymede Air Forces Memorial, Coopers Hill Lane, Englefield Green, Egham, Surrey. Tel 01784 433329. See Tripadvisor. wiki commonwealth_war_graves_memorials
Ukraine: Babi Yar, near Kiev.
USA: Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia, USA. Gettysburg.
American Battle Monuments Commission abmc warmemorialsandcemeteries

Heritage Plaques

Cemeteries with Memorials
El Alamein, Egypt

I am updating this post and will add more during today and later.

More Information From:
www.findagrave
www.wikipedia Somme
www.wikipedia war_memorials

You can do tours of Belgium and France which will help you visit the grave of your ancestor or the wall where their name is inscribed.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.