Remembrance Sunday commemorates the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month when the armistice took effect and the guns of the Great War fell silent. The first Armistice Day was held to commemorate the first anniversary of the end of the war in 1919. In 1921 the newly formed British Legion started selling red poppies to commemorate the fallen (inspired by the poem “In Flanders Field written in 1915 by Laurence Binyon) so this year marks the 100th anniversary of that tradition.

This year English Heritage installed poppies throughout Marble Hill Park to remind all those who enjoy its peace and tranquillity of the sacrifices made by those who fell in battle. 

Sitting for a moment’s reflection at eleven o’clock on Remembrance Sunday it was both surprising and evocative to hear whistles blowing and men shouting when all should have been silence. These were not the whistles of officers calling their men to go over the top to run towards machine guns. They were instead the whistles of referees calling order to a Sunday morning football match. Rather than being shocking there was something very affirming about the noise. I had seen the teams standing together side by side in silence paying their respects before the start of their matches. The poppies on the fences were a strong symbol of remembrance but the noise of the footballers felt like a true tribute to the fallen, proof that life goes on or as another line in Binyon’s poem says,

“There is music in the midst of desolation.”