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Armistice Day to be marked in the UK with silence | Armistice Day to be marked in the UK with silence |
(about 2 hours later) | |
The anniversary of the World War One armistice - signed 95 years ago on Monday - is to be marked in the UK with a two-minute silence at 11:00 GMT. | |
Ceremonies will take place at military bases, town halls, churches, schools, and at the National Memorial Arboretum in Alrewas, Staffordshire. | |
The Royal British Legion has its own event in London' s Trafalgar Square. | |
Meanwhile, the Duke of Edinburgh will visit Belgium, scene of some of World War One's deadliest battles. | |
This year, Armistice Day, which honours members of the armed forces who have died since the war, comes a day after Remembrance Sunday. | |
On Sunday, two-minute silences took place at war memorials across the UK and the Commonwealth. | |
In London, the Queen and other members of the Royal Family laid the first wreaths at the Cenotaph in Whitehall, before a march-past by 10,000 military veterans and civilian representatives. | In London, the Queen and other members of the Royal Family laid the first wreaths at the Cenotaph in Whitehall, before a march-past by 10,000 military veterans and civilian representatives. |
On Armistice Day, the country will again be asked to pause in memory of those who have served and died for Britain. | On Armistice Day, the country will again be asked to pause in memory of those who have served and died for Britain. |
The silence takes place at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month - the time the guns fell silent along the Western Front in 1918, and an armistice was declared. | |
It was first observed in November 1919 following a suggestion by an Australian journalist. | |
The proposal was supported by a former high commissioner to South Africa and endorsed by the cabinet and King George V just a few days before the first anniversary of the armistice. | |
Nation's tribute | |
Prince Philip's visit to Ypres - where he will take part in a Last Post ceremony - is his first outside the UK since undergoing abdominal surgery in June. | |
The bugle call in the ceremony - which has taken place at the Menin Gate memorial in Ypres every day since it was founded in 1928 - will be followed by a minute's silence. | |
The gate features the names of more than 54,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers who died during World War One who have no known graves. | |
Prince Philip, 92, will accept 70 sandbags filled with soil collected from the World War One battlefields of Flanders by Belgian schoolchildren. | |
The soil, taken from Commonwealth cemeteries, will be placed in the Flanders Field Memorial Garden at The Guards Museum in London, which is due to open next year. | |
The duke will also lay poppy wreaths to commemorate the dead. | |
Commemorations in Ypres began on Monday morning with a separate memorial service at Menin Gate. | |
In Lytham St Annes, Lancashire, people from across the UK are expected to answer a request to attend the funeral of a World War Two veteran they never knew. | |
Harold Jellicoe Percival served as ground crew on the famous Dambusters raids carried out in May 1943 by 617 Squadron. | |
The funeral home organising the service put an advert in a local newspaper - which was then widely publicised on social media sites - appealing for people to attend. | |
Meanwhile, 93-year-old Dorothy Ellis - thought to be the last surviving widow of a World War One veteran - is expected to join senior representatives of the government and the armed forces at the National Memorial Arboretum, in Staffordshire. | |
The arboretum's Portland stone memorial is designed so that on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, a shaft of sunlight dissects its inner and outer walls, falling on a bronze wreath sculpture. | |
It is the nation's tribute to more than 16,000 servicemen and women who have died on duty, or as a result of terrorism, since 1948. | |
In London, the Royal British Legion's sixth Silence in the Square remembrance will end with members of the public dropping poppy petals into the Trafalgar Square fountains. | |
Actor Adrian Lester and Britain's Got Talent winner Paul Potts will make appearances at the event alongside The Poppy Girls - five schoolgirls aged between 10 and 17 whose fathers are all servicemen. | |
Their song The Call (No Need To Say Goodbye) was released on Saturday as part of this year's Royal British Legion appeal. |