[ad_1]
A wave of cheering and gleeful noise swept New Zealand Sunday for the launch of the international commemoration of the centenary of the end of the First World War.
The celebration followed two minutes of silence at 11 am on November 11, the date of the signing of the armistice.
There was a salvo of 100 guns on Wellington's waterfront, while locals applauded at the national level, the bell bells rang, the emergency services sounded their sirens and the honking ships and cars sounded.
"The chime and roaring chorus resumed the wave of spontaneous jubilation and hope that swept New Zealand when the news of the armistice broke out," said Premier Jacinda Ardern when 39, a service organized at the Wellington War Memorial.
"We are thinking of our commitment as a nation to the ideals of peace, multilateralism and inclusion.
"We will do our best to honor our ancestors by continuing to hold these values to the service of the next generation and our future."
Thousands of people, many with poppies on their chests, attended the commemorations held across the country.
The June 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, triggered a conflict that was described as "a war to end all wars".
More than 70 million soldiers were mobilized and about 10 million lost their lives.
More than 100,000 New Zealanders – about 10% of the population at the time – served overseas during the war and 18,300 were killed.
"No family, no community in New Zealand has been spared from the effects of the war," AFP Sarah Davies, director of the centennial program of the First World War, told AFP.
"Young people formed relationships with people who looked like them – men, young women who had great hardships, and who went abroad or suffered a terrible loss. contact with it has been crucial. "
In 1915, more than 10,000 New Zealand and Australian soldiers died in Gallipoli on the Turkish peninsula.
Although the campaign failed in its military objectives, the campaign left behind the legacy of courage and friendship that unites the two countries and is considered the "majority" of New Zealand.
