Half way through the two-minute silence a widow, still raw with grief, began to sob.
By the time the buglers at the newly-unveiled Cenotaph sounded the Last Post 60 seconds later, nearly 1,000 people were in tears.
Tomorrow, exactly a century after the Great War ended, organisers are recreating the extraordinary scenes of the first national service of remembrance in London.
The year before there had been a victory parade past a temporary war memorial made of plywood.
But in the summer of 1920, the Cabinet decided that Whitehall would be at the heart of national mourning and remembrance throughout the British Empire.
As well as a permanent Cenotaph to the Glorious Dead, the body of an unidentified British soldier would represent the 887,858 Tommies killed in the four-year war.
His body would be buried in Westminster Abbey, the parish church of the Empire, for a grateful nation to mourn its dead.
The idea came from Rev David Railton MC, a young chaplain who had served with valour on the Western Front. On October 4, King George V gave his consent.
In the days before the Armistice, four teams of an officer and two other ranks set off in secrecy to the battlefields of Somme, Aisne, Arras and Ypres.
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OUR commemorative pullout in yesterday’s Sun, 100 Years, 100 Stories, told personal experiences from World War One that should never be forgotten.
We are now offering it free as a resource for teachers. The 24-page supplement won praise from Education Secretary Damian Hinds. “These stories are a brilliant way of bringing the lives of 100 years ago to life,” he said. “This great initiative captures the war from many different perspectives, useful for anyone who wants to learn or teach about it.”
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They dug up the remains of four British soldiers killed early in the war, so they would be unidentifiable.
Each body, carried in sacking, was examined at the Military Headquarters at St Pol, south of Calais, before being covered with a Union Flag.
At just after midnight on November 7, Brigadier General John Wyatt, head of British Forces in France, chose one body.
The Unknown Warrior would receive the respect and honours given only to princes, generals and the greatest of statesmen.
The following day in Boulogne, where crowds lined the streets, his body was transferred from a pine box to a coffin hewn from a 100-year-old oak that once stood at Hampton Court.
Under leaden skies, the Unknown Warrior passed the White Cliffs of Dover aboard HMS Verdun, which sailed in silence into the dock.
It was the same journey that over the four years of the war more than a million Tommies wounded in the hell of the Western Front had taken.
As the train carrying his body and a barrel of soil from a French battlefield thundered through Kent, crowds gathered at every station.
Read about the historic events of 100 years ago as they would have been reported in The Sun
At London’s Victoria station he lay in state overnight, before being carried on a gun carriage to Whitehall just before 11am — his coffin covered in a blood-stained battlefield Union Flag.
In a ceremony unchanged for 98 years, the Monarch and princes, surrounded by generals and politicians, waited at the
Cenotaph for Big Ben to strike 11 o’clock on Thursday, November 11, 1920.
In nearby Westminster Abbey, a thousand widows and mothers — all believing the Unknown Warrior was their husband or son — waited.
A Times reporter inside the Abbey, wrote: “The tension was almost too great. When seconds seemed to halt people held their breath lest they be heard in the stillness. At last a woman sobbed and the breakdown helped release the tears which others had with difficulty held trembling on their eyelids. Many were weeping at the end of the two minutes.”
The King — just like our Queen did for more than half a century and now Prince Charles — placed the first wreath at the Cenotaph on behalf of a grateful nation. After a short service at the Cenotaph, the Unknown Warrior’s coffin was carried into the Abbey.
A tin helmet, a side-arm and the King’s wreath lay on top.
The King, with his generals and admirals of the fleet, stood at the grave as the coffin was lowered and covered in the earth from the Western Front.
Outside, hundreds of thousands of people waited to file past the Cenotaph. Such were the numbers that it took them up to six hours to walk the three-quarters of a mile from Trafalgar Square to Westminster Abbey.
The outpouring of grief saw The Cenotaph almost buried in wreaths of mainly green and white flowers — Poppies were not introduced until the following year.
In the four days that followed in 1920, one and a quarter million grieving families filed past the Cenotaph, placing an astonishing 100,000 wreaths on the new memorial to the Glorious Dead.
They carried on down Whitehall, which had been closed to traffic, to pay their respects at the grave of the Unknown Warrior.
They called it the People’s Pilgrimage and the only other outpouring of grief to come near was the death of Princess Diana eight decades later.
A spokesman for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, which is responsible for arranging tomorrow’s ceremony, said: “When we saw the pictures of the first Armistice in 1920 we wanted to create a People’s Pilgrimage for today.”
So the People’s Procession was born, where descendants of the men and women who served in the Great War could remember them.
The Royal British Legion held a ballot and ten thousand people won their place in the mile-long walk that starts on the Mall at 12.30pm.
They will follow the 9,000 military veterans of all conflicts who will march past the Cenotaph from 11.30am. Those waiting in the Mall for the People’s Procession will watch the Armistice on big screens. When the walk gets under way they will be able to lay their wreaths, just like in 1920.
Ian Kennard will be among the 10,000 modern-day participants. For Ian, 68, from Southampton, it is a chance to honour the grandfather he never knew. Private Henry Joseph Moody, of the 13th battalion Royal Fusiliers, was in the Battle of the Somme in 1916.
In the early hours of November 15, he was lost on patrol in fog and his body never found.
In 2012, Ian and his two brothers placed a cross at the spot where he vanished. Tomorrow he will lay another cross at the Cenotaph.
Ian says: “I knew nothing about him until 2002 when I was given his medals from an aunt. I feel so proud of him.”
English teacher Janine Creaney, from Canterbury, Kent, and her niece Olivia will be walking in honour of her grandfather Frederick Edwards, from London’s Canning Town.
He lied to enlist and his mother, Martha, had him brought back. He went back two years later and was wounded in the hand. He lived to be 77.
Janine says: “It will be an honour to remember him on Sunday.”
Today
LORD Mayor’s Parade, London.
Fields of Remembrance: Westminster Abbey; Cardiff Castle; Saltwell Park, Gateshead; National Arboretum, Staffs; Belfast City Hall; Lydiard Park, Royal Wootton Bassett, Wilts.
10am-7pm: Shrouds of the Somme, Olympic Park, East London. On until November 18. Free.
3.40pm: Twickenham at half time in the England v New Zealand rugby international, fans will watch a film made by former flanker Lewis Moody, who lost three great uncles in World War One who have no graves.
5pm-9pm: 10,000 flames will be lit at the Tower of London in the showpiece Beyond The Deepening Shadow.
8.30pm, BBC 1: British Legion Festival of Remembrance from the Royal Albert Hall, attended by the Royal Family, will feature Sir Tom Jones, Sheridan Smith and Michael Palin.
Tomorrow
REMEMBRANCE Day will start at 6am with bagpipers in 2,000 locations across the UK and Commonwealth playing the traditional lament, Battle’s O’er.
In Mons, Belgium, 15 bike riders will set off on a sponsored cycle ride to London, via Ypres.
Also from 6am and throughout the day, giant portraits of local war heroes will be etched into the sand at 32 beaches around the UK for Danny Boyle’s Pages Of The Sea national event. The public can also make beach drawings to pay tribute to loved ones who served in the Great War.
In Folkestone, Kent, a 150ft x 150ft portrait of war poet Wilfred Owen will be etched in the beach at Sunny Sands.
10.30am: London’s Olympic Park will fall silent for a service of Remembrance at the Shrouds of the Somme. Families of the 72,396 Tommies whose bodies were never found are expected to be there.
11am: National two-minute silence led by the Royal Family at the Cenotaph in Whitehall. Prince Charles will again lay a wreath on behalf of the Queen.
National mourning to mark the moment the guns finally fell silent will be held at war memorials throughout the UK, including Alexandra Gardens, Cardiff, and Edinburgh Castle.
11.30am: More than 9,000 Royal British Legion veterans will march past the Cenotaph, including 98-year-old Pte Donald Smith with the Queen’s Own Highlanders and Jeff Wilkins, 97, who travelled from San Diego. California, to be with the Federation of RAF Apprentices and Boy Entrants.
12.30pm: The Nation’s Thank You begins with the People’s Procession, when 10,000 men, women and children with a family connection to the Great War will leave London’s Green Park and walk past the Cenotaph. It will take an hour for them all to complete the 1.2 mile route, where they can place wreaths on the national war memorial.
Also at 12.30pm, international bell ringing: Just as they did in 1918, bells will ring out in cathedrals and churches in the UK and Europe to mark the end of the war.
1.45pm: In Edinburgh, poems by Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon will be read at a free concert on the site of the former Craiglockhart Military Hospital, where soldiers were treated for shellshock.
5pm: Beefeaters at the Tower of London will light the last flames of the Beyond The Deepening Shadow remembrance showpiece .
6pm: The Queen will attend the National Service to mark the centenary at Westminster Abbey with the Prime Minister, royals, politicians and guests.
7pm: A chain of 1,000 beacons will be lit from Unst, the most northerly inhabited island in the UK, to Cornwall.
7.05pm: Bells ring out as the beacons blaze throughout Britain and criers in 180 towns perform a “cry for peace”.
On TV
SKY and BBC News will both be showing Armistice Centenary events throughout tomorrow.
BBC1, 10am-1.30pm: David Dimbleby and Dan Snow present coverage of the Cenotaph ceremony, veterans march- past and the People’s Procession. Highlights on BBC at 7pm.
BBC1, 1.45pm: Forces’ sweetheart Katherine Jenkins hosts a Remembrance Sunday Songs Of Praise from Southampton.
BBC1, 5.10pm: Sophie Raworth leads BBC coverage of the official Memorial Service at Westminster Abbey.
BBC2, 9.30pm: Don’t miss the first TV screening of Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson’s brilliant 90-minute colourised film They Shall Not Grow Old.
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