Jenny Barchfield, The Associated Press
DOUAUMONT, France - Leaders of a united Europe and delegations from Canada and Australia on Tuesday marked the 90th anniversary of the end of the First World War, which tore the continent apart and cost millions of lives.
Prince Charles and French President Nicolas Sarkozy attended the solemn ceremony in the northeastern French town of Douaumont, near the site of the Battle of Verdun - one of the conflict's bloodiest battlefields.
There, an estimated 300,000 soldiers lost their lives in 300 days of ferocious fighting between French and German troops for control of River Meuse, a key strategic post on the eastern approach route from Germany to Paris. The French forces prevailed in December 1916.
Charles, Australia's governor general Quentin Bryce, Sarkozy and Peter Mueller, president of German Bundesrat, laid wreaths at the foot of a massive French flag that soared over the esplanade between two large fields of crosses - the burial markers.
Sarkozy stressed how far Europe had come since the end of the conflict.
The leaders had come together, he said, to honour "all those who fought to the extreme limit of their strength, their hearts full of love of country, and the conviction they were defending a just cause."
Veterans Affairs Minister Greg Thompson represented Canada at the ceremony.
"Today is a national holiday here. Huge crowds have come out to say 'Thank you' to Canadians and all those other nations that helped liberate France in both wars," Thompson said.
"And we brought many of those World War Two veterans with us as well over here, so a very emotional day for all of here on the ground in France."
Hundreds of people, including veterans from other wars, stood outside a huge stone ossuary in Douaumont, where the remains of unknown soldiers from both sides of the war are buried.
Gerard Aprile, a 59-year-old former French military parachutist and a regular at Armistice Day ceremonies in France, said the death this year of 110-year-old Lazare Ponticelli, the last of the 8.4 million Frenchmen who fought in the conflict, had changed the tone of the event this year.
"The ceremony will always be there, but without a human witness, there is an emptiness," said Aprile, who wore his military uniform.
Germany's last veteran from the war also died earlier this year, leaving only a handful of living veterans around the world, including Canada's John Babcock, 108.
In London, three frail British veterans honoured the sacrifice of more than 700,000 fallen comrades at a ceremony.
The tributes were led by Henry Allingham, 112, who was in the air service; Harry Patch, 110, the last British survivor of the trench war; and Royal Navy veteran Bill Stone, 108.
Applause swelled from the crowd surrounding the Cenotaph memorial as the three old warriors were rolled out in wheelchairs into the intense sunlight.
Allingham said in a recent interview with The Associated Press that he was determined to be at the Cenotaph monument for the two-minute silence at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.
"I want everyone to know," he said. "They died for us."
Allingham's chin slumped on his chest as his wreath was laid, a poignant evocation of the familiar lines said at remembrances: "They shall not grow old as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn." Some five million people served in the British forces during the war.
Patch was called up in 1916, and fought at the Battle of Passchendaele, which he has described as "mud, mud and more mud mixed together with blood." He was seriously injured in 1917 when a shell exploded near him, killing three of his closest friends.
Patch, a machine-gunner in the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry, gave his verdict on the conflict at a veterans' event last month: "It was not worth it," he said. "It was not worth one, let alone all the millions (who died)."
Stone joined the navy in September 1918, and was still in training when the war ended. He remained in the service to see action in the Second World War, including the evacuation of Dunkirk and the invasion of Sicily.
"I am very happy to be here today," Stone said Tuesday. "It is not just an honour for me but for an entire generation."
"It is important to remember the dead from both sides of the conflict. Irrespective of the uniforms we wore, we were all victims."
Dennis Goodwin, chairman of the World War One Veterans' Association, said the three men were a symbol of human resilience.
"These men suffered the horrors of a war and they had to then face a life of uncertainty - the Great Depression and the aftermath of the war," Goodwin said before the ceremony.
"They had little or no help for any of the traumas they suffered and no help from the government, and they created our generation."
The Cenotaph - literally "empty tomb" - monument was designed by the architect Edward Lutyens and was erected as a temporary wood and plaster structure for the first Remembrance Sunday in 1919.
In Belgium's west Flanders region, thousands stood in driving rain in the town of Ieper - better known to soldiers by its French name, Ypres - at the annual poppy parade commemorating Armistice Day.
Belgian buglers carried out the daily Last Post ceremony under the Menen Gate, the arched war memorial whose limestone walls bear the names of 55,000 soldiers that went missing during the war.
Belgium saw some of the fiercest and bloodiest trench warfare on the Western Front, mostly across Flanders' Fields. The battle of Passchendaele, a village near Ypres, was one of the worst. It left some 500,000 soldiers, more than 15,000 of them Canadian, dead or wounded in 1917-18.
DOUAUMONT, France - Leaders of a united Europe and delegations from Canada and Australia on Tuesday marked the 90th anniversary of the end of the First World War, which tore the continent apart and cost millions of lives.
Prince Charles and French President Nicolas Sarkozy attended the solemn ceremony in the northeastern French town of Douaumont, near the site of the Battle of Verdun - one of the conflict's bloodiest battlefields.
There, an estimated 300,000 soldiers lost their lives in 300 days of ferocious fighting between French and German troops for control of River Meuse, a key strategic post on the eastern approach route from Germany to Paris. The French forces prevailed in December 1916.
Charles, Australia's governor general Quentin Bryce, Sarkozy and Peter Mueller, president of German Bundesrat, laid wreaths at the foot of a massive French flag that soared over the esplanade between two large fields of crosses - the burial markers.
Sarkozy stressed how far Europe had come since the end of the conflict.
The leaders had come together, he said, to honour "all those who fought to the extreme limit of their strength, their hearts full of love of country, and the conviction they were defending a just cause."
Veterans Affairs Minister Greg Thompson represented Canada at the ceremony.
"Today is a national holiday here. Huge crowds have come out to say 'Thank you' to Canadians and all those other nations that helped liberate France in both wars," Thompson said.
"And we brought many of those World War Two veterans with us as well over here, so a very emotional day for all of here on the ground in France."
Hundreds of people, including veterans from other wars, stood outside a huge stone ossuary in Douaumont, where the remains of unknown soldiers from both sides of the war are buried.
Gerard Aprile, a 59-year-old former French military parachutist and a regular at Armistice Day ceremonies in France, said the death this year of 110-year-old Lazare Ponticelli, the last of the 8.4 million Frenchmen who fought in the conflict, had changed the tone of the event this year.
"The ceremony will always be there, but without a human witness, there is an emptiness," said Aprile, who wore his military uniform.
Germany's last veteran from the war also died earlier this year, leaving only a handful of living veterans around the world, including Canada's John Babcock, 108.
In London, three frail British veterans honoured the sacrifice of more than 700,000 fallen comrades at a ceremony.
The tributes were led by Henry Allingham, 112, who was in the air service; Harry Patch, 110, the last British survivor of the trench war; and Royal Navy veteran Bill Stone, 108.
Applause swelled from the crowd surrounding the Cenotaph memorial as the three old warriors were rolled out in wheelchairs into the intense sunlight.
Allingham said in a recent interview with The Associated Press that he was determined to be at the Cenotaph monument for the two-minute silence at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.
"I want everyone to know," he said. "They died for us."
Allingham's chin slumped on his chest as his wreath was laid, a poignant evocation of the familiar lines said at remembrances: "They shall not grow old as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn." Some five million people served in the British forces during the war.
Patch was called up in 1916, and fought at the Battle of Passchendaele, which he has described as "mud, mud and more mud mixed together with blood." He was seriously injured in 1917 when a shell exploded near him, killing three of his closest friends.
Patch, a machine-gunner in the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry, gave his verdict on the conflict at a veterans' event last month: "It was not worth it," he said. "It was not worth one, let alone all the millions (who died)."
Stone joined the navy in September 1918, and was still in training when the war ended. He remained in the service to see action in the Second World War, including the evacuation of Dunkirk and the invasion of Sicily.
"I am very happy to be here today," Stone said Tuesday. "It is not just an honour for me but for an entire generation."
"It is important to remember the dead from both sides of the conflict. Irrespective of the uniforms we wore, we were all victims."
Dennis Goodwin, chairman of the World War One Veterans' Association, said the three men were a symbol of human resilience.
"These men suffered the horrors of a war and they had to then face a life of uncertainty - the Great Depression and the aftermath of the war," Goodwin said before the ceremony.
"They had little or no help for any of the traumas they suffered and no help from the government, and they created our generation."
The Cenotaph - literally "empty tomb" - monument was designed by the architect Edward Lutyens and was erected as a temporary wood and plaster structure for the first Remembrance Sunday in 1919.
In Belgium's west Flanders region, thousands stood in driving rain in the town of Ieper - better known to soldiers by its French name, Ypres - at the annual poppy parade commemorating Armistice Day.
Belgian buglers carried out the daily Last Post ceremony under the Menen Gate, the arched war memorial whose limestone walls bear the names of 55,000 soldiers that went missing during the war.
Belgium saw some of the fiercest and bloodiest trench warfare on the Western Front, mostly across Flanders' Fields. The battle of Passchendaele, a village near Ypres, was one of the worst. It left some 500,000 soldiers, more than 15,000 of them Canadian, dead or wounded in 1917-18.
