9th November: Remembrance Sunday/Poppy Day

World War I ended on 11 November, but many of the observances take place on the nearest Sunday to that date, ie today. 10 things you might not know about Remembrance Day traditions:

1. The UK's national ceremony is held in London at the Cenotaph on Whitehall and, since 2002, also at the Women's Memorial. It is organised by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, with The Royal British Legion coordinating the March Past. It consists of the laying of wreaths by members of the royal family, Politicians and representatives of both military and civilian services, the two minutes' silence at 11am and the march past.
2. The music used in the march past is the same every year, and includes Rule, Britannia!, Heart of Oak, Men of Harlech, The Skye Boat Song, Isle of Beauty, Nimrod from the Enigma Variations The Last Post, O God, Our Help in Ages Past and ends with the national anthem, God Save The Queen.
3. The ceremony is the joint-longest running live televised annual event in the world, the record being shared with the Chelsea Flower Show, having been broadcast every year since 1946. The 1947 telerecording of the ceremony is the oldest surviving record of a broadcast of a live outside event.
4. The poppy symbol comes from a poem written by a Canadian doctor, Colonel John McCrae, the day after he had conducted the funeral of his friend, Lt. Alexis Helmer of Ottawa, who had been killed by a mortar. Sitting in an ambulance and looking out over a graveyard where poppies were growing, he put all his anger and grief into that poem, which took him 20 minutes to write.
5. The poem nearly never saw the light of day at all. McCrae actually didn't think it was very good, and threw it away. Luckily, a fellow officer rescued it.
6. The tradition of wearing a poppy was started by Moina Michael, who was working in the YMCA Overseas War Secretaries' headquarters in New York. She read McCrae's poem, and was so moved that she wore one in remembrance two days before the Armistice was signed on November 11, 1918.
7. He wasn't the first to notice poppies growing on a battlefield, though. A writer in the 19th century is believed to have noted that the bright red flower, the colour of blood, seemed to sprout on the formerly barren fields after the battles of the Napoleonic wars had ended.
8. Today, there is disagreement about when you should start wearing your poppy. Some say it should be from 1 November, others say from the launch of the annual appeal in late October. However, it's generally agreed that nobody should be wearing one on November 12th as strictly speaking, they should have been left at a tomb or cenotaph during the ceremony.
9. Submariners hold an additional remembrance walk and ceremony on the Sunday before Remembrance Sunday, which has The Submariners Memorial as its focal point.
10. The Last Post bugle call originated in the British Army in the 17th century. An officer, accompanied by a bugler, would check to see whether soldiers were in their barracks for the night. The first post meant his rounds had started and those still not back at base should return. The ‘last post’ indicated that the sentries were in place for the night, and that soldiers could retire for the evening.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

John Macrae