OLD and young gathered today to remember the fallen as York, North and East Yorkshire joined the rest of the country in two minutes’ silence.

In York, many tourists and visitors were among the thousands who packed into Memorial Gardens, filled the adjacent river bank and city walls and lined the streets to applaud the city’s servicemen and women on Remembrance Sunday.

Senior officers of the British Army’s 15th (North-East) Brigade, serving, reserve and cadet officers from several York-based units as well as civilian organisations paraded from the Eye Of York to the Gardens, where they were joined by veterans of the Royal British Legion and other ex-servicemen and women’s organisations who had marched from Stonegate, the Lord Lieutenant of North Yorkshire, Lord Crathorne, the civic party headed by the Lord Mayor of York, Coun Keith Hyman, as well as former Lord Mayors, senior police officers and many other dignataries.

During the wreath laying by civilian and military leaders, Julian Sturdy laid one on behalf of both the city’s MPs. His Labour counterpart, Hugh Bayley, was in Prague where he laid a wreath at the British War Memoiral, Olsany Cemetery.

At Elvington, scouts, guides, cubs and brownies, RAF representatives and a French contingent took part in the 55th Act of Remembrance at the French Memorial for the French squadrons based at the nearby airfield during the Second World War and in the afternoon the standard of 6 Group (Royal Canadian Air Force) Bomber Command was formally laid up at the Yorkshire Air Museum station chapel.

Remembrance Day parades and commemorations were also held at Malton, Norton, Pocklington, Selby, Tadcaster, Kirkbymoorside and many other places.