Remembrance, the Fallen and the Eleventh Hour
There is something about November that has always seemed to me to be a month for remembering. The days grow shorter, the leaves have mostly fallen from the trees, the evenings draw in and there is often a particular stillness in the air. In Britain, November has a very special significance, because it is the month when the country pauses to remember those who gave their lives in two world wars and in the many conflicts that have followed.
Living in Italy, as I have done for so many years, I have become equally aware of the Italian traditions of remembrance. They are not quite the same as the British ones, although the feelings behind them are remarkably similar. Both countries have their war memorials, their ceremonies, their wreaths and their lists of names, often carved into stone in the centre of a town or village. And behind every name there was once a son, a husband, a brother or a father. Someone who left home and never came back.
It is perhaps worth looking at how these two countries remember their dead, because the history of the twentieth century affected Britain and Italy in very different ways, even though both suffered enormously.
The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month
Let us begin in Britain.
On 11 November 1918, at eleven o’clock in the morning, the guns fell silent on the Western Front. The Armistice between the Allies and Germany had been signed earlier that morning and came into effect at eleven. After more than four years of appalling slaughter, the fighting was finally over.
The First World War had taken an almost unimaginable toll. Millions of men had been killed, millions more wounded, and an entire generation had been changed by the experience. There were villages in Britain where practically every family had lost somebody. The familiar names of places such as the Somme, Ypres, Passchendaele and the Marne became associated with suffering on a scale that had scarcely been imagined before.⁸
It was not simply a matter of soldiers dying on a battlefield. It was the disappearance of young men from ordinary communities, from streets and schools, from farms, factories and offices. One day they were there; the next, their families were waiting for a telegram.
The silence of eleven o’clock became a way of remembering them.
The first national two-minute silence was observed in Britain on Armistice Day in 1919, following a proposal accepted by King George V. It was an extraordinary idea: for two minutes, the whole country would stop what it was doing. No work, no traffic, no conversation. Just silence.
And it has remained one of the most moving features of British public life.
Remembrance Sunday and the Cenotaph
In Britain, the principal national ceremony takes place on Remembrance Sunday, the second Sunday in November. This year, in 2026, it falls on 8 November.
The centre of the national commemoration is the Cenotaph in Whitehall, London. The word comes from the Greek and means an empty tomb. It is a memorial to those whose bodies lie elsewhere, or whose graves were never found.
The original Cenotaph was a temporary structure erected for the 1919 victory celebrations. It was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and proved so popular that it was replaced by the permanent Portland stone memorial, unveiled in 1920.
Every year, members of the Royal Family, the Prime Minister, politicians, representatives of the Armed Forces and veterans gather there. Wreaths are laid, the Last Post is sounded and the country observes its two minutes of silence.
There is something very British about this ceremony. The carefully arranged military formations, the veterans marching past, the representatives of the different services, the royal presence and the wreaths of red poppies all contribute to a solemn occasion that has become part of the national calendar.
And then there are the veterans themselves. Some march with great difficulty, some are helped along, and some are now very old indeed. Their presence is a reminder that history is not always something that happened a very long time ago. For some people, it is something they lived through.
The ceremony is broadcast on television and watched by millions. Even those who have no particular interest in military affairs often find themselves stopping to watch.
The red poppy
One of the most recognisable symbols of remembrance in Britain is, of course, the red poppy.
The association comes from the poppies that grew in the disturbed earth of the battlefields of Flanders after the fighting. Their appearance among the mud and devastation became a powerful image of life continuing after destruction.
The Canadian doctor and poet John McCrae wrote his famous poem In Flanders Fields in 1915, and its opening image of poppies growing between the crosses helped establish the flower as a symbol of remembrance.
The Royal British Legion adopted the poppy as its emblem and has organised the annual Poppy Appeal since 1921. The money raised helps veterans, serving personnel and their families.
Every November, poppies appear on lapels, coats, television presenters and public buildings. They are sold in shops, supermarkets and on street corners. The familiar little paper flower has become an almost universal feature of November in Britain.
There are, of course, different opinions about the wearing of poppies, and not everybody chooses to wear one. But the intention behind the symbol is remembrance, and that is something which should not be forgotten.
T8he Unknown Warrior
Another particularly moving British memorial is the grave of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey.
On 11 November 1920, the body of an unidentified British soldier, brought from the battlefields of France, was buried in the Abbey. He represented all those whose bodies had never been identified and whose families had no grave to visit.
It is difficult to imagine a more powerful idea. A single unknown soldier became the representative of hundreds of thousands of men who had disappeared into the battlefields of Europe.
The grave is visited by people from all walks of life, and it has become a place where the personal grief of individual families meets the collective memory of the nation.
There is something particularly poignant about the fact that a man whose name will never be known has become one of the most recognised figures in British remembrance.
November in Britain
Remembrance is not the only event that makes November distinctive in Britain.
There is, of course, Bonfire Night on 5 November, with fireworks, bonfires and the annual recollection of Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot. It is a rather different sort of occasion, involving considerably more noise than the two-minute silence!
But as the month progresses, the atmosphere changes. The excitement of fireworks gives way to the more reflective business of remembrance. In churches, schools, town halls and village squares, ceremonies take place. Local bands play, wreaths are laid and people gather around their war memorials.
The names on those memorials are often the most affecting part of the whole occasion.
In many villages, the First World War list is longer than the Second World War list. Sometimes the same family name appears several times. One begins to appreciate just how devastating the conflict was for small communities.
And the names are not simply historical records. They are reminders of people who once walked the same streets, went to the same schools and perhaps sat in the same pubs as their descendants do today.
The Second World War and the remembrance of later conflicts
The First World War was supposed to be the war to end all wars. Sadly, it was not.
Twenty-one years after the Armistice, Europe was once again at war. The Second World War brought another period of terrible destruction, not only to soldiers but to civilians on an enormous scale.
Britain endured the Blitz, the bombing of its cities, the loss of merchant seamen, the Battle of the Atlantic, the fighting in North Africa in which my dad took part as a tank driver at El Alamein, Italy and where my wife’s father, who was a radio operator, was taken prisoner, and northern Europe, and the enormous undertaking of the liberation of Europe.
Remembrance gradually came to embrace not only the dead of 1914–18 but also those who died in 1939–45 and in subsequent conflicts.
The names of Korea, Malaya, the Falklands, Northern Ireland, Iraq and Afghanistan have become part of the more recent history of British military service.
The Festival of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall is another important part of the November calendar. It brings together music, ceremony, veterans and representatives of the Armed Forces. It is a reminder that remembrance is not simply about the past, but also about those who serve today and the families who live with the consequences.
And what about Italy?
Having spent so much of my life in Italy, I have become increasingly interested in the way the Italians remember their war dead.
The Italian equivalent of the British November commemoration is particularly associated with 4 November, the Giornata dell’Unità Nazionale e delle Forze Armate, the Day of National Unity and the Armed Forces.
This date commemorates the armistice signed at Villa Giusti, near Padua, on 3 November 1918, which came into effect at three o’clock in the afternoon on 4 November.
It brought the fighting between Italy and Austria-Hungary to an end and marked the completion of an important stage in Italian national unification, with Trento and Trieste returning to Italian control.
There is a difference here worth remembering. The Italian armistice of 4 November ended hostilities on the Italian front; the general armistice with Germany, which brought the fighting on the Western Front to an end, followed on 11 November – an event recollected in the museum we visited this summer at my wife’s mother’s home town of Vittorio Veneto.
Italy had entered the First World War in 1915, and its experience was particularly brutal. The fighting along the Alpine frontier, in the Dolomites, on the Isonzo and around the Piave involved appalling conditions. Soldiers fought in mountains, snow, mud and freezing temperatures. The names of Caporetto, the Piave and Vittorio Veneto became part of the national story.
The cost was enormous. Hundreds of thousands of Italian soldiers died, and many more were wounded, captured or permanently disabled.
For a relatively young nation, unified only in 1861, the First World War was an extraordinary national experience. It was both a military struggle and a defining moment in the development of Italian national identity.
The Italian Unknown Soldier
Italy, like Britain, has its Unknown Soldier.
The Italian Milite Ignoto was buried at the Altare della Patria in Rome on 4 November 1921.
The body had been selected from the remains of unidentified soldiers and brought from Aquileia to Rome by train. The journey became a national event, with people gathering along the route to pay their respects.
The monument itself, the enormous white structure dedicated to Victor Emmanuel II, dominates the Piazza Venezia. The Unknown Soldier rests beneath the eternal flame, watched over by a military guard.
It is one of the most important national memorials in Italy.
There is a striking similarity between the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey and the Italian Milite Ignoto in Rome. Both represent the countless men whose names and graves were lost. Both give a nation somewhere to place its grief.
The monuments in Italian towns and villages
Perhaps the most interesting difference between Britain and Italy is what happens at local level.
In Italy, almost every town and village seems to have its Monumento ai Caduti, a monument to the fallen. Sometimes it is an imposing stone structure in the main piazza; sometimes it is a modest plaque on the wall of a church or municipal building.
Walk through an Italian village and you may find a list of names from the First World War, followed by another from the Second. There may be a wreath, an Italian flag, and perhaps a small ceremony organised by the local council and the associations of former servicemen.
Here in the Bagni di Lucca area, as in so many parts of Italy, the history of the wars is never very far away. The memorials are part of the landscape and the names are part of the local history.
I find these monuments particularly moving because they bring the great events of European history down to a very human scale.
The First World War was fought across vast territories, involving millions of men, but the consequences were felt in tiny communities. A young man from a mountain village might have travelled hundreds of miles to fight and die somewhere on the Isonzo. His name would eventually find its way back home, carved into a piece of stone.
And there it remains…at Bagni di Lucca as at8 San Cassiano.
The same is true of British villages. In both countries, the memorial is a reminder that the dead were not simply soldiers in a history book. They were members of a community.
The other Italian dates: 25 April and 2 June
Italy has two other important national commemorations which help explain its particular relationship with the Second World War.
The first is 25 April, Festa della Liberazione, Liberation Day.
This marks the liberation of Italy from Nazi occupation and Fascist rule in 1945. It is a particularly important date because the Italian experience of the Second World War was complicated by the collapse of Mussolini’s regime in 1943, the German occupation of much of the country and the subsequent struggle involving the Resistance, Allied forces and Italian partisans.
The liberation was not simply a military event. It was also a political and moral turning point in the history of modern Italy.
Then there is 2 June, Festa della Repubblica, Republic Day, commemorating the referendum of 1946 in which Italians voted to abolish the monarchy and establish a republic.
These dates are different from 4 November. The latter is associated with the First World War, national unity and the Armed Forces; 25 April is about liberation from Fascism and Nazi occupation; and 2 June celebrates the birth of the Republic.
It is important not to confuse them, because together they tell us something about the complicated history of Italy during the twentieth century.
Two countries, two traditions, one human tragedy
So, how do Britain and Italy compare?
Britain has developed a particularly strong national tradition around Remembrance Sunday. The Cenotaph, the poppy, the two-minute silence, the Last Post and the Royal British Legion are familiar to almost everyone.
Italy’s remembrance is perhaps more closely connected with the local monument, the national flag, the Armed Forces and the history of Italian unification. The Altare della Patria in Rome provides the great national focus, while the smaller monuments in towns and villages keep the memory alive locally.
There is also a difference in the way the two countries experienced the Second World War.
Britain was never occupied by Nazi Germany, although it suffered devastating bombing and enormous military losses. Italy, on the other hand, experienced dictatorship, military defeat, occupation, civil conflict and liberation. Its remembrance therefore carries several different layers of history.
But beneath these differences there is something universal.
A mother waiting for news of her son is a mother waiting for news of her son, whether she lives in Kent or Tuscany. A wife who receives the news that her husband has been killed does not suffer any less because the uniform he wore was different.
The language of the memorials may be different, but the grief is the same.
Remembering is not the same as celebrating war
There is one other thought that I think is worth making.
Remembrance should never be confused with a celebration of war.
The ceremonies may involve uniforms, medals, military bands and impressive displays of discipline, but the real purpose is not to glorify conflict. It is to remember the human cost and to recognise the sacrifices made by those who were caught up in it.
We should remember the courage of those who served, but we should also remember the suffering of civilians, the families left behind, the wounded, the prisoners and those whose lives were never quite the same again.
The poppy is not a celebration of the battlefield. It is a reminder of what happened there.
The same is true of the wreath laid at an Italian village monument. It is not simply a patriotic gesture. It is a recognition that lives were lost and families were changed forever.
Perhaps that is why these ceremonies continue to matter, even as the generations who actually experienced the wars gradually disappear.
At the going down of the sun
I have lived in Britain and Italy, and both countries have become part of my life. I have grown up with the British traditions of November and have come to appreciate the Italian traditions too.
There is something rather special about being able to look at the history of two countries from both sides of the Channel. Their experiences were different, their ceremonies developed differently, and their national memories are not always straightforward. Yet the need to remember is shared.
When the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month arrives, Britain will fall silent. In Italy, the ceremonies of 4 November will already have taken place, and the monuments in the piazzas will once again have received their wreaths.
And perhaps, in some small village in Tuscany, someone will stop for a moment in front of a memorial and read the names carved into the stone.
They are names that have been there for more than a century. Some families will still recognise them. Others may no longer know the stories behind them.
But the names remain.
And so should the memory.
The words of Laurence Binyon’s poem For the Fallen, written in 1914, have become part of the British remembrance tradition. They are familiar to generations of people, and they seem to me to express everything that this time of year is about:
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.
