Impact and Emotional Responses
The Manchester Guardian ran a story about how people behaved for the very first two minute silence for Remembrance Day in 1919:
“The first stroke of eleven produced a magical effect.
The tram cars glided into stillness, motors ceased to cough and fume,
and stopped dead, and the mighty-limbed dray horses hunched back
upon their loads and stopped also, seeming to do it of their own volition.
Someone took off his hat, and with a nervous hesitancy the rest of
the men bowed their heads also. Here and there an old soldier could
be detected slipping unconsciously into the posture of ‘attention’.
An elderly woman, not far away, wiped her eyes, and the man beside
her looked white and stern.
Everyone stood very still ... The hush deepened. It had spread over the
whole city and become so pronounced as to impress one with a sense
of audibility. It was a silence which was almost pain ... And the spirit of
memory brooded over it all.”
The Manchester Guardian. 12 November, 1919.
Year 4 pupils explored the impact did the two-minute silence have on the people of Manchester.
Read how they thought and shared how:
• People expressed and shared grief
• Showed respect
• Connected with strangers
• Everyone stopped their activities and observed the silence.
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