86 Remembering the Dead, The Cenotaph

In this episode we are walking down Whitehall, one of London’s most famous streets, to remember the dead of the First World War.

Fabian Ware joined the British army at the outbreak of the war, but because he was 45 years old, the authorities would let him fight on the front line and put him in charge of a mobile ambulance unit instead.

Appalled by the number of casualties and troubled that the dead were not being recorded properly he began keeping note. On account of his efforts, the organization now called the Commonwealth War Graves Commission came into existence. The process of remembrance began.

11 November 1919 was the first anniversary of the war’s end. It was marked with the construction of a temporary memorial called the Cenotaph on Whitehall, a march of remembrance and the return of the Unknown Soldier. The outpouring of emotion at this event and the public’s actions demanded that the temporary Cenotaph be made permanent. And across the whole of the British Isles collective grief propelled the largest public art project ever seen as communities took it upon themselves to build their own local memorials to remember all the dead.

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