Remembrance Day Memories - Leonie

Light shining down into the Shrine of Remembrance
Sourced from Shrine of Remembrance website (www.shrine.org.au)

Remembrance Day has always been important to me. I think that the moment’s silence at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day, the anniversary of the signing of the document that ended World War I, is an appropriate way to honour those who have died in any war. I can remember being awed as a child when I was first told that, once a year, on 11 November at 11 a.m., a ray of sunlight shines through an aperture in the roof of the Shrine of Remembrance to light up the word "Love" in the inscription “Greater love hath no man” on the Stone of Remembrance.

I attended Remembrance Day ceremonies with my family and as a student with my school. For most of my life, no matter where I was, there would be an announcement asking for a moment’s silence, usually followed by a reading of the poem “For the Fallen” by Robert Laurence Binyon (1869-1943), published in The Times newspaper on 21st September 1914.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

and the words:

Lest we forget.

Nowadays there is not nearly as much attention paid to Remembrance Day but I still observe the moment’s silence at 11am on November 11th. I always will.