Today is Armistice Day.  At eleven o’clock this morning, millions are expected to pay tribute to those who died serving their country.  The two-minute silence will be held exactly 82 years after the Great War officially ended, on the ‘eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month’.  The Royal British Legion will mark the occasion by holding Silence in the Square, a memorial service at Trafalgar Square in London, and followed by the playing of Reveille by a sole bugler.

The Queen will also be attending a special service at Hyde Park Corner, in London.  There is a special dedication ceremony to a new memorial for those New Zealanders who lost their lives for the Dominion.  Helen Clark, New Zealand’s Prime Minister, will also be attending. 

This seems an appropriate time to remember all those, not just Britons, who chose to serve the United Kingdom at her times of need.  Not just those from the Dominions, who were tied by blood, but those who also had no such ties.  Those who saw the United Kingdom as a bastion of freedom, and were willing to serve with the British forces under a foreign flag.  Gurkhas from Nepal, Poles and Czechs from occupied Eastern Europe, Norwegians and Danes from occupied Scandinavia, Irishmen who were willing to put aside their differences with a bigger neighbour, and even the Americans (many who were veterans of previous fighting with Nazis and Fascists in Spain) who made up the Eagle Squadron in this country. 

To all those, whatever their nationality, who served this country at the times of our greatest need; thank you!