Year 6 Remembrance Assembly

Welcome to Year 6’s Remembrance assembly. This year, 2014, is very important as it is one hundred years since we started commemorating the lives lost in the great war and other world conflicts – we call this a centenary year.

1914 was the year that the First World War began. This war was also known as the Great War and the ‘war to end all wars’. People in England hoped that the war would be over very quickly, but it lasted for four, long years.

Since 1914, the onset of the First World War is remembered in; France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Russia, Turkey, India, Africa, the Caribbean, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada and, of course, the United Kingdom.

Every year since 1914 these countries have put aside one day in which we stop. We think. We take time out of our lives and bring to mind those people who fought and suffered and died in that terrible war a hundred years ago.

We also remember the people who were caught up in the Second World War and the dozens of other conflicts around the world that have occurred since then and those that are still being fought today.

November is the eleventh month of the year and it was on the eleventh hour, on the eleventh day, of the eleventh month that World War One ended in 1918.

The world leaders during WW1 had come together to try to find a way to end the war and each signed and agreement called the Armistice that meant an end to fighting. War was to end between those countries involved.

On that momentous day – a Monday – back in 1918, at eleven o’clock in the morning, the guns fell silent – war was over and every year since 1919, we commemorate that ceasefire and hold services to remind us all of that special day.

On the first Remembrance Day in 1919, people gathered in the streets in cities, towns and villages to join together in remembering all those that they had lost in the Great War.

So many of the battles fought during that war were in an area of Belgium called Flanders and in Northern France where poppies would grow wild in the fields where the men had lost their lives.

Because of this, people began to wear poppies on their lapels as a mark of respect for the millions of men who lost their lives or who were injured whilst fighting for our liberty. They also share two minutes of silence to remember the Armistice on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.

In Fladers’ FieldsIn Flanders’ Fields the poppies blow,Between the crosses, row on row,That mark our place: and in the sky,The larks, still bravely singing, flyScarce heard amid the guns below.We are the dead. Short days agoWe lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,Loved and were loved, and now we lie,In Flanders’ Fields.

After WW1, many of the bodies of the soldiers killed in the fighting were buried on the battlefields, in war cemeteries. Thousands of people from all over the world visit them to this day to pay their respects to loved ones and remember the great sacrifice that they made for us.

Thousands of the brave men who died have no known graves. Some of you may have heard of the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior. It is in Westminster Abbey in the heart of London. One soldier is buried there. His body was brought back from France after WW1. Nobody knows who he was, but his grave commemorates of the unknown soldiers who have fallen in battle.

In this centenary year, the Great War is being remembered in lots of ways. The are exhibitions, museums, plays, films, TV programmes and perhaps most spectacular of all, is the ‘Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red’ art installation at the Tower of London.

Each of the 888,246 ceramic poppies in the moat around the Tower represents a serviceman who died during the Great War and reminds us that we must never forget what our great-great grandfathers and uncles did for us during that terrible time.

At the end of this Centenary year each of the poppies will be sold to raise millions of pounds for 6 British Charities whose interests lie in the welfare of ex soldiers, sailors and airmen and their families.

Despite this, buying and wearing your poppy is so very important to the British Legion every year, as with the money they raise in November they are able to support injured servicemen who have fought and been injured in more recent conflicts in places such as Afghanistan, The Gulf or Northern Ireland.

Some of you will have attended memorial services at the weekend where you will have said prayers or even marched past one of the many war memorials that we have in our local towns and villages all over the country. These are a vital part of our local history and often have the names of the local men who have died in both world wars engraved upon them.

Even Mellor had its own war memorial, where the names of the men who went to the Great War and never came back are commemorated. Perhaps next time you are walking past, you could step into the garden, have a close look at those names and really remember what those men did for us all.

This term, Year 6 will be carrying out a project based around the Mellor Memorial and the local men who are named on it. During this time we will take the opportunity to reflect on their bravery and share in out country’s enormous pride in the courage of the men who paid the ultimate price in this centenary year.

Oh you who sleep in Flanders Fields,Sleep sweet – to rise anew!We caught the torch you threwAnd holding high, we keep the FaithWith All who died.We cherish, too, the poppy resThat grows on fields where valor led’It seems to signal to the skiesThat blood of heroes never dies,But lends a lustre to the redOf the flower that blooms above the deadIn Flanders Fields.And now the Torch and Poppy RedWe wear in honor of the dead.Fear not that ye have died for naught;We’ll teach the lesson that ye wroughtIn Flanders Fields.

(Moina Michael, 1918)