PARIS – Europe is marking Armistice Day with ceremonies and moments of silence as France opens an international memorial on a former battlefield.
This year’s events have special significance because 2014 is the 100th anniversary of the First World War’s start. Tuesday is the 96th anniversary of the armistice that ended the war on Nov. 11, 1918.
President Francois Hollande is hosting German and British officials for events in France. Hollande laid a wreath at the tomb of the unknown soldier under Paris’ Arc de Triomphe.
Later, Hollande is heading to northern France to inaugurate an international war memorial on the former battlefields of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette. The Ring of Memory carries the names of 600,000 soldiers who died in the region during the war. Names are listed alphabetically without their nationalities.
Wreaths of poppies cover the road at the base of the Cenotaph during The Western Front Association annual Service of Remembrance in London on November 11, 2014. In services around the country tributes were paid to the millions of British servicemen who have died in conflict since the start of the First World War 100 years ago. November 11 marks Armistice Day, the day on which a ceasefire came into effect in 1918 that ended the First World War on the Western Front. Andrew Cowie, AFP/Getty Images
A girl looks at poppies floating on the water of the fountain in Trafalgar Square in London on Armistice Day, November 11, 2014. Andrew Cowie, AFP/Getty Images
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