Remembrance Day

Wednesday, November 11, 1998

The Queen honors fallen soldiers

PARIS (AP) -- The queen of Britain and the president of France presided over an occasion both grand and poignant today -- the last major anniversary of World War I likely to include veterans of the carnage.

The 80th anniversary of when the guns fell silent -- at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 -- was marked under a brilliant blue sky with plenty of pomp and ceremony.

At the stroke of 11 a.m., Queen Elizabeth II arrived at Paris' grandest military site, Napoleon's Arc de Triomphe. She was greeted by President Jacques Chirac, and together they walked under the arch to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, where the queen laid a red wreath by the eternal flame, inscribed: "In Memory of the Glorious Dead."

The two leaders were introduced to four World War I veterans: 101-year-old Gen. Maurice Bourgeois, a lieutenant at Verdun; Abramo Pellencin, 102; Guy Cohen, 101; and Georges Rideau, 101. France's oldest survivor from the war -- Rymond Abescat, 107 -- was unable to attend.

"I prefer not to talk about it," an emotional Rideau told reporters. "There are good and bad memories. I did my duty."

He said it was "painful" that today's youth did not seem interested in the Great War.

Bruno Manfrini, an 84-year-old World War II veteran, was the first to jump to attention when the French national anthem, the Marseillaise, began to play. He saluted with his white-gloved hand, weeping at the same time. "It's a magnificent moment for France to have the queen here on this occasion," Manfrini said.

Arlette Huiban, 72, a World War II volunteer nurse, wore her medals and those of her husband, a World War II pilot who was killed in a wartime accident. "This is a day to remember everyone who died in all our wars," she said.

The Great War was supposed to be quick, and a "war to end all wars," but of course it wasn't. It was a four-year nightmare of unimaginable brutality, one that killed millions and changed Europe forever.

The war killed 13 million civilians and 8.5 million combatants. Russia lost 1.8 million soldiers; Germany an estimated 1.7 million; Britain more than 900,000; Italy 650,000; the United States 116,000. Proportionally, France was hardest hit, with 1.3 million dead.

The sheer devastation wrought on France can partly be measured by the 30,000 or so monuments in cities, towns and villages across the nation. Some villages list more war dead than their current populations.

After lunch with Chirac, where the president called for better defense cooperation in Europe, the queen unveiled a statue of Sir Winston Churchill -- on the Avenue Winston Churchill, just off the Champs-Elysees. The statue is modeled after a photograph of Churchill marching down the huge avenue on Nov. 11, 1944, at the side of Gen. Charles de Gaulle.

Saying that Churchill had always loved France, the queen, speaking in French, noted that "relations between Churchill and de Gaulle were not always very easy. But they always knew that Great Britain and France had a lot in common."

Later in the day, the queen was to travel to Ypres in Belgium, where she was joining King Albert II in remembering the appalling losses from a four-year war of attrition against the Germans in the trenches there.

There was one major figure missing from the ceremonies: Germany's new leader, chancellor-elect Gerhard Schroeder, whose spokesman said last month that he had informed Chirac he couldn't attend because his calendar was already full with creating a new government.

Another spokesman, Uwe-Karsten Heye, told German radio today there had been "no direct invitation," and any French interpretation of the action as a snub was a "misunderstanding."

More than 61,000 Australians were also killed in fighting overseas during World War I, and ceremonies were held today in towns and cities throughout Australia.

Ernie Sanders, a 98-year-old veteran, shed a tear as he was helped up from his wheelchair to lay a wreath during a ceremony in Sydney.

"I'm not a weepy bloke as a rule," he told reporters. "I'm just really highly honored to have been accepted to lay the second wreath."