Yes, pretty much all commonwealth countries, and some others, have remembrance day.
For the uninformed:
During World War I, most of the trench warfare of that massively bloody conflict took place on the border between France and Germany, with the Commonwealth on the French side. Many, many, many war dead were buried at a place that at the time was known as "Flander's Fields". The sheer number of casualties was so staggering that they had to be buried near the front line they were fighting on in life. Very few soldiers had their bodies shipped home.
Flander's fields are grasslands in which the red poppy grows, much like dandelions elsewhere. Carpets of them. They grew between the crosses. Around the crosses. On the graves themselves. They became symbolic of the war-dead. Lt.-Col. John McCrae, a soldier who at the time of writing the following poem had recently lost one of his closest friends in the conflict, was inspired to write "Flander's fields", as seen below.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
— Lt.-Col. John McCrae
Much like the poppy, the poem itself is very symbolic of remembrance day. The native larks would often sing over the sounds of gunfire and artillery, as mentioned in the poem. All in all, it was a very surreal location.
The graves are still there to this day.
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Topic: Remembrance day (Read 3199 times)