Remembering the fallen on Armistice Day across Meridian region
Thousands across the Meridian region have paid silent tribute to those who lost their lives in conflict on Armistice Day despite coronavirus restrictions impeding usual commemorations.
Covid-19 restrictions forced much of the British public to observe the traditional two-minute silence at 11am on Wednesday from their homes this year.
But scaled back socially-distanced commemorations were also held across the UK, from Southampton to Hove.
This year, Armistice Day marks the centenary of the burial of the Unknown Warrior in London’s Westminster Abbey after the end of the First World War.
Poet Laureate Simon Armitage has penned a poem commemorating the anniversary, which honours the symbolic “son we lost” who is “a soul without name or rank or age or home”.
The Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall attended a private, televised service at the abbey to mark the funeral of the unknown British serviceman whose body was brought back from northern France in 1920.
He was laid to rest at the west end of the abbey’s nave on November 11 that year to represent all those who lost their lives in the First World War but whose place of death was unknown or body never found.