FRANCE: BRITAIN'S QUEEN & JACQUES CHIRAC MARK ARMISTICE DAY (2)

Описание: (11 Nov 1998) Eng/French/Nat

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 in the French capital on Wednesday.

The Queen later unveiled a statue of former British Prime Minister and World War Two leader Sir Winston Churchill on an avenue renamed the Avenue Winston Churchill.

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

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

On Wednesday, Britain's Queen Elizabeth II and France's President, Jacques Chirac, led a ceremony that was both grand and poignant - the last major anniversary of the Great War likely to include veterans of the carnage.

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

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 - on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 - was marked with pomp and ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe.

In front of a few remaining survivors the Queen and President Chirac placed a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, under the arch.

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

Germany lost an estimated one point seven 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 One monuments in cities, towns and villages across the nation.

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

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 in France just days before the anniversary.

Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin asked that 49 mutineers, executed as an example, be fully re-integrated into the national collective memory.

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

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.

Many are believed now to have been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after enduring the horrors of the trenches for months.

Later on Wednesday there were echoes of World War Two when the Queen and Chirac unveiled a statue of Sir Winston Churchill on an avenue renamed the Avenue Winston Churchill.

The statue is modelled on a photograph of Churchill marching down the Champs Elysees on November 11th, 1944, at the side of General Charles de Gaulle.

Chirac paid tribute to Churchill after the unveiling.

SOUNDBITE: (French)
"Churchill is, first of all, an exceptional figure, an irreducible fighter who embodied with panache the willingness of resistance of a country and a united people."
SUPER CAPTION: Jacques Chirac, French President




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