Скачать или смотреть FRANCE: BRITAIN'S QUEEN & JACQUES CHIRAC MARK ARMISTICE DAY

(11 Nov 1998) Natural Sound

Britain's Queen Elizabeth the Second and French President Jacques Chirac have marked the 80th anniversary of Armistice Day at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

Watched by a few remaining survivors of the Great War, they placed wreaths at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

It was supposed to be a quick war - a "war to end all wars".

Instead, it was a four-year nightmare of unimaginable brutality, one that killed (M) millions and changed Europe forever.

On Wednesday, Britain's queen and France's president presided over an occasion both grand and poignant - the last major anniversary of the Great War likely to include veterans of the carnage.

Precious few are still alive who fought in World War I.

And yet fascination with the conflict remains, evident in the countless grainy, black-and-white photos gracing newspaper and magazine covers in France and Britain as the anniversary approached.

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 with pomp and ceremony at the grandest military site in Paris - Napoleon's Arc de Triomphe.

At 1100 local time (1000 GMT), in front of a few remaining survivors, Queen Elizabeth II and President Jacques Chirac placed a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, under the arch.

They also planned to place another wreath at a statue of Georges Clemenceau, France's deeply respected World War I leader.

There were echoes of World War II as well - later in the day, the queen was to unveil a statue of Sir Winston Churchill on an avenue renamed the Avenue Winston Churchill.

After that ceremony, she was to travel to Ypres in Belgium - to join Belgian 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 French ceremonies.

Germany's new leader, chancellor-elect Gerhard Schroeder, told Chirac he could not attend because his calendar was already full with creating a new government.

He, however, dismissed as "rubbish" reports that he wasn't attending because he wanted to avoid the past.

The Great War killed 13 (m) million civilians and eight and a half (m) million combatants.

Germany lost an estimated one point seven (m) million soldiers; Britain lost more than 900-thousand, Italy 650-thousand and the United States 116-thousand.

France was proportionally the hardest hit, with one point three (m) million dead.

The sheer devastation wrought on France can partly be measured by the 30-thousand or so World War I monuments in cities, towns and villages across the nation.

Some villages list more war dead than their current populations.

As if there were any doubt about the enduring wound left by the war, a bitter dispute broke out between the political right and left just days before the anniversary.

Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, visiting the site of a suicidal offensive against the Germans at Chemin des Dames, asked that 49 mutineers executed "as an example" be "fully reintegrated today into our national collective memory".

Chirac, a rightist, called Jospin's remarks "inopportune".

A political ally of the president, former Interior Minister Jean-Louis Debre, said Jospin's remarks would "justify acts of mutiny in the future".

The same debate has taken place in Britain, where last week some 306 men executed for cowardice or desertion were not included in a memorial led by the queen.


Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork
Twitter:   / ap_archive  
Facebook:   / aparchives   ​​
Instagram:   / apnews  


You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...