If the
Wellington Arch is war memorial central in space, then
Remembrance Sunday is certainly war memorial central in time. The photo at the right was taken on the lawn of Westminster Abbey, where scores of companies, corps, divisions, and other groups of veterans are remembered by the poppies and little wooden markers that you see here in advance of the November holiday.
[Left click on any image to see a larger version.]
The
poppies are a very important symbol of remembrance in the UK, and you can read about what they signify by following the link. All media personnel, as well as any politicians, that you see on TV start wearing poppies several weeks before the day. I
don't know if they do that every year, but this year was somewhat special as it was the 90th anniversary of the end of the Great War, making it an extra commemoration. And wearing a poppy in my buttonhole really made me feel like a Londoner!
But the poppies, and poppy wreaths, are in evidence at all times of the year, and by any memorial—not only those remembering British veterans, as you can see on the left. This memorial is the
Soviet Citizens Memorial on the grounds of the Imperial War Museum, erected to honor the 27
million Soviet soldiers and civilians who died in World War II.
I realized, too late, that we should have taken a wreath to place at the
Earls Colne memorial on the site of the base where our Dad was stationed during WWII. There's one there, as you can see on the right, but it wasn't ours. If I'm lucky enough to be able to visit the site again, I'll definitely take one to leave in honor of him and his friends.
I have more pictures of both old-style and new-style memorials (I talk about this distinction in
yesterday's post). And just be aware that even if the poppy wreaths don't show in the photos, they were most likely there, at each memorial.
Here's one side of a fairly elaborate old-style structure, the Horse Guards Memorial between St. James' Park and the
Horse Guards Parade grounds.
And here's the relief section of a memorial honoring submariners in both wars, on the Victoria Embankment:
You can learn a lot of military history from many of these memorials, in particular ones like the one on the left,
commemorating the siege of Malta, which includes a narrative description of events.
[Being a government information librarian, for whom the ease of access to official publications electronically these days is a true wonder of our modern world, I couldn't resist making the link above to speeches about the funding for the memorial, published in 1991 in Hansard, the official transcript of Parliamentary proceedings—found in seconds on Google!]Others, like the
Chindit Memorial on the right above, might not contain as much detail themselves, but they certainly pique the curiosity of visitors not familiar with the people and events they honor.
In addition to the lovely and moving Australian and New Zealand memorials I featured yesterday, there are also fine memorials thanking other Commonwealth nations for their aid in wartime. I particularly liked the
Canada memorial in Green Park near Buckingham Palace (on the left). The general
Commonwealth Memorial, on Constitution Hill not far away, is also quite impressive (on the right).
And, of course, the Commonwealth isn't the only non-English area to have sent boys to die for king and country. Here is the inscription on the outside of the
Scottish National War Memorial, located on the grounds of Edinburgh Castle:
There are, of course, memorials all over the UK (you can get an idea of how many by searching the database of the
UK National Inventory of War Memorials) and some of the most touching are those honoring the sacrifice of men from a specific locale. Since most of London's major memorials are more general in their commemoration, I didn't see as many of this type. But there were a few, such as the one pictured below, that I found in Bishop's Park.
And when I visited other towns, I did take note of memorials there, such as the one on the left above, taken in Pembroke College, Cambridge, and the one on the right, taken in the little Norman church in Avebury. (It's a perfect example of how World War II addenda were appended to many memorials; and the ratio of Avebury dead in each conflict is pretty representative of the numbers in the UK as a whole.)
One of the most unusual memorials I saw was this one in Hyde Park, honoring animals in war (note the poppy wreaths!) which I describe in more detail in my
"dog post":
Given my family history, I was particularly interested in memorials honoring flyboys, and there are certainly lots of those.
The RAF even has its own church in London,
St. Clement Danes.
And the engraved plexiglass panels at the
Imperial War Museum in Duxford, with each plane icon representing American airmen lost from English bases, was a particularly moving expression of British gratitude. I wish I could have taken photos in
St. Paul's, where they also have a lovely memorial to Americans who lost their lives in World War II, but you can see some views of it by following the link above.
One of my favorite war memorials is this one near St. Paul's, on the outside, where photos are allowed, which honors the firefighters who worked so selflessly and tirelessly during the Blitz; and I'm particularly pleased with how this photo came out. Soak up that London sunshine!
Just a few more pictures to show you, to illustrate that not all the memorials in London commemorate wartime deeds and heroes. There's this lovely 9-11 memorial, in Grosvenor Square, made of wood rather than stone, for a very different look:
And there are many memorial structures and other items dedicated to two much beloved royals from different eras. The
Diana Memorial Fountain, part of which is shown at the left, is a very pleasant and unusual water feature in Hyde Park, situated on her memorial walk and not far from her memorial playground, and, of course,
Kensington Palace, where hundreds of mementos were piled after her death (see
The Queen for a dramatization) and where some still are left on occasion today.
And, finally, who can forget Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's true love, who is memorialized all over the city, but nowhere else quite as elaborately (many might say, neurotically?) as in the
Albert Memorial, also in Hyde Park. A structure so over-wrought as to be almost hallucinogenic, it does serve a landmark function very well, since you can see it from almost anywhere in the park. And, it certainly keeps the old boy in the thoughts of Londoners and visitors passing by, of which there are many, given its location (across the street from—of course—the Royal Albert Hall). Not as moving a remembrance as many of the others I've featured here, but it's rather inescapable and does excel at its job of reminding us of dear old Albert.
