By OSWALD T. BROWN
WASHINGTON, D.C., November 12, 2023 – As a young reporter with The Nassau Daily Tribune in the 1960s, I covered the annual Remembrance Day ceremonies in downtown Nassau on several occasions. At the time, there were a number of Bahamians still alive who fought in World War II, and it was always an impressive ceremony. Those halcyon memories occupied my mind when I saw the excellent collection of photos posted on Facebook today by Minister of Foreign Affairs Fred Mitchell that were taken at the Remembrance Day activities in downtown Nassau today.
Therefore, I absolutely had to share some of them with readers of my online publication, BAHAMAS CHRONICLE, which has a huge following among Bahamians in the diaspora across the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom as well as in The Bahamas and the wider Caribbean.
Given the advances that have been made in Internet technology, I always do extensive research on historical subjects that I plan to write about. Here’s an excerpt on an Armistice Day article published in The Independent, a British newspaper, on Wednesday, November 8, 2023.
Armistice Day is observed in Britain every 11 November to mark the agreement signed between the Allies and Germany that brought an end to the First World War and to remember the soldiers who gave their lives during that savage conflict, as well as those killed in subsequent wars defending democratic freedoms.
The armistice – an agreement to down weapons as a prelude to the peace negotiations that would finally be completed with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles the following June – was signed in the railway carriage of French Marshal Ferdinand Foch, supreme commander of the Allied forces, deep in the forests of Compiegne in Picardy, France.
The signing took place at approximately 5.45am on a chilly Monday morning, a quiet, informal ceremony at odds with the thunderous din of the war itself playing out across the Western Front.
The agreement came into effect “on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month” of 1918. But more than 2,000 men died in the intervening five hours between its signing and that deadline. George Edwin Ellison of Leeds is said to have been the last British combatant to die, falling just outside Mons.
Since then, 11 November has been kept for the memory of Britain’s war dead every year, the date often referred to subsequently as Remembrance Day in the Commonwealth and as Veterans Day in the United States.
The first Armistice Day celebration was King George V’s “Banquet in Honour of the President of the French Republic” at Buckingham Palace on 10 November 1919. A two-minute silence was held in the palace grounds at 11am the following morning, so that, as His Majesty put it: “The thoughts of everyone may be concentrated on reverent remembrance of the glorious dead”.
The custom has been observed nationwide for more than a century subsequently to provide a pause for reflection on the supreme patriotic sacrifice of the brave young men who never came back.
See complete article in THE INDEPENDENT at https://news.yahoo.com/armistice-day-history-behind-remembrance-173537562.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall\
EDITOR’S NOTE: According to Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, The British West Indies Regiment was a unit of the British Army during the First World War, formed from volunteers from British colonies in the West Indies. In 1915 the British Army formed a second West Indies regiment from Caribbean volunteers who had made their way to Britain. Initially, these volunteers were drafted into a variety of units within the army, but in 1915 it was decided to group them together into a single regiment, named the British West Indies Regiment. The similarity of titles has sometimes led to confusion between this war-time unit and the long-established West India Regiment. Both were recruited from black Caribbean volunteers and a number of officers from the WIR were transferred to the BWIR.
The 1st Battalion was formed in September 1915 at Seaford, Sussex, England. It was made up of men from: British Guiana — A Company; Trinidad—B Company; Trinidad and St Vincent—C Company; Grenada and Barbados—D Company.
A further 10 battalions were formed afterwards. High wastage led to further drafts being required from Jamaica, British Honduras and Barbados before the regiment was able to begin training. In total 15,600 men served in the British West Indies Regiment. Jamaica contributed two-thirds of these volunteers, while others came from Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, the Bahamas, British Honduras (now Belize), Grenada, British Guiana (now Guyana), the Leeward Islands, Saint Lucia and St Vincent. Nearly 5,000 more subsequently volunteered.
