Armistice Day in France

Seeing Juno Beach just two weeks ago was quite well-timed to personally commemorate Remembrance Day this year and I also wanted to attend some kind of service today in Tours.  My housemate figured there would be something, but she didn't know any details.  I saw that something was happening at the Saint Martin Basilica that had a little something to do with remembering the First World War but a lot more to do with this guy around whom Tours seems to have formed (something I've been learning all about in this neat History of Tours course I'm taking and something that I will eventually blog about).  Finally I found some details on the local newspaper's website and this morning I went to check it out.

Apparently there is a "Monument to the Dead" in a square I pass every day that I never noticed!  I still didn't see it since there were people all around and I found myself more interested in the various French military standing around.

Air Force I think.  There is a large training base near Tours and this was the largest group represented. 

Regular ol' infantry I figured.

Some very young looking navy guys

We thought these would be the officers.  Hanging out by the carousel

And...no idea!!  But they had swords!

I missed the laying of wreaths and lighting of a flame, but saw a bunch of military personnel get decorated and heard a group of children sing the Marseillaise.  There was a marching band, but they didn't seem formal enough to be military.  And they played some peppy music, including something that resembled the Last Post (I just learned that that was British and Commonwealth tune).  Then, we all paraded through the downtown to the City Hall where we heard the mayor give a speech.  Some people looked down from balconies as we paraded by and I have images of what it might have been like on the actual Armistice Day.

There were no poppies, there was no silence at 11:00 and we were just following this marching band in a random parade down the street at that time.  There weren't a lot of people overall and we were quite up close and personal with the navy hanging out at City Hall. 

It's more and more apparent to me that the Second World War memory is so indeed very different in France than what I know as my own Canadian "memory" and this French commemoration of Armistice Day felt very different than what is so familiar for me in Remembrance Day.  Yes, there was the same attention given to lives lost in current conflicts as is becoming more and more a part of Canadian Remembrance Day, but overall it did not feel as familiar of an event as I thought it may.  Yes, we were on the same "side" in the two world wars, but the memory is different.  And you might think that here in this city that was bombed and occupied, there would be a greater solemnity to the commemoration of lives lost, but I did not sense this.  My reflection on this is not entirely formed, but I can't help but think of a sentence that a French person said to a British friend of mine here this week: "Oh yeah.  The Second World War.  We won that."  To which the Brit was thinking, "Um, yeah didn't we help you out with that just a bit?!"