REMEMBERING PUDDLETOWN'S FALLEN
Armistice
- from the Latin ‘arma’, arms or weapons, and ‘sistere’ to stand, stop or cease.
In November 1918, Allied Forces and the Germans signed an armistice agreement in a railway carriage within the forest near Compiègne, northern France.
The armistice was officially agreed at 05.00 and came into force at 11.00 (Central European Time) – the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. However, as fighting continued during those six hours, 2,738 men died on the last day of the war.
As the armistice was a ceasefire not an official end to war, the Compiègne agreement was for thirty-six days and further renewed four times before the Treaty of Versailles.
The first Armistice Day celebration was held in the grounds of Buckingham Palace on the morning of 11th November 1919. This included a two-minute silence for those who had died in the war and those left behind.
In 1920 King George V unveiled the Cenotaph (‘empty tomb’) as a symbol for the nation to commemorate the dead and symbolise those with no known grave.
Puddletown placed its own memorial, gates and a lantern above the entrance to St Mary’s churchyard to honour the fallen of the Great War. On the left-hand side by the gate is a small plaque which reads, “Sit mortuorum pietas lucerne vivis”- Let the devotion of those who died be a lantern unto the living.
In 1939, Britain moved the two-minute silence to the Sunday nearest 11 November so as not to interfere with wartime production. This became Remembrance Sunday.
After the Second World War, Puddletown veterans held their own Remembrance Sunday parades along St Mary Street.
The Royal British Legion continued the tradition into this century, Dorset Echo featuring The Royal British Legion tribute to the fallen in 2006.
In addition to the lantern, we also have the village memorial next to the gates in the churchyard and the names of the fallen on plaques inside the church.
“At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, We Will Remember Them.”
Laurence Binyon