The specter of new conflict haunts memorials around World War I's end

YPRES, Belgium -- Red poppy flowers were dropped onto soldiers, politicians and onlookers from crossed the satellite gathered successful occidental Belgium connected Tuesday to commemorate the extremity of World War I.

They laid wreaths astatine a recently renovated memorial for the fallen successful Ypres, the Belgian municipality that earned the grim grant of being synonymous with the brutality of conflict.

Tuesday is known arsenic Armistice Day — oregon Veterans Day successful the United States and Remembrance Day successful Britain, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa — marking the extremity of WWI.

Soldiers from New Zealand to Canada paraded done municipality toward the Menin Gate, a monolithic chromatic memorial inscribed with the names of tens of thousands of soldiers who were killed but near without graves.

Bagpipes and bugles rang retired alongside an electrical guitar that played “Masters of War” by Bob Dylan successful Flemish and English. A choir sang John Lennon's “Imagine.”

In Britain, galore radical paused for 2 minutes of soundlessness astatine 11 a.m., marking the infinitesimal the warfare ended successful 1918, astatine the 11th hr of the 11th time of the 11th month.

In France, President Emmanuel Macron attended the accepted ceremonial astatine the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier nether the Arc de Triomphe and lit the eternal occurrence astatine the memorial engraved with the words: “Here rests a French worker who died for the nation.”

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said that the nation's infinitesimal of soundlessness was “a noiseless echo of the hush that fell crossed Europe erstwhile the guns stopped successful 1918.”

From 1914-1918, the armies of France, the British Empire, Russia and the U.S. fought against a German-led conjugation that included the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires. The warfare killed astir 10 cardinal soldiers, sometimes tens of thousands connected a azygous day.

Hundreds of thousands died successful Ypres alone.

The blood-soaked fields of the Flanders portion saw the improvement of much modern ways to kill. Horses galloped adjacent to tanks. Poison state was introduced. Aerial surveillance provided precision to artillery that overwhelmed medieval fortifications.

In the aftermath of “the warfare to extremity each wars” and past WWII, a modern geopolitical strategy was forged with an purpose to avert aboriginal conflicts, giving commencement to the United Nations and the European Union.

Decades later, crossed once-devastated Europe, nations are again rearming, plowing investments into the defence manufacture successful effect to Russia's full-scale penetration of Ukraine.

The 27-nation EU has been disquieted by a bid of airspace violations, immoderate of them adjacent to its borders with Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. Western officials person accused Russia and its proxies of staging dozens of incidents of sabotage.

Aside from Europe, wars successful places arsenic distant arsenic Gaza and Sudan person had interaction good beyond their borders. Tensions successful Asia person led Japan and others to summation subject spending. And astir the world, ascendant governmental movements situation the antiauthoritarian order, with authoritarianism connected the rise.

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Associated Press writers Rod McGuirk successful Melbourne, Jill Lawless successful London, and Sylvie Corbet successful Paris contributed to this report.