We will remember them: Greater Manchester stands together to honour the glorious dead

The countless names carved in stone or etched in metal may fade and dull over time, but the enduring respect they command lives on forever.

Greater Manchester, as it always does, will stand together this weekend to observe Remembrance Sunday and Armistice Day on Monday. Towns and villages will fall silent around war memorials in tribute to the many thousands of lives lost to secure our freedoms.

The first time Armistice Day was observed in Manchester was on November 11, 1919, after the guns of the First World War's Western Front finally fell silent.

READ MORE: Remembrance Sunday 2024: Live updates from services across Greater Manchester

The late edition of the Manchester Evening News on the day captured the scene in the city.

"Nothing more impressive has ever been experienced in this country than the complete cessation of sound and movement by which England paid tribute to her glorious dead on this Armistice Day, the first anniversary of the day on which the great war ended," reported our correspondent.

"For two minutes there was almost absolute silence throughout the land. As the appointed time drew near - the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month - there was a great gathering of people in Albert Square, Manchester.

"From all directions they came to take their stand at the foot of the Town Hall steps, on the 'island' pavement, in the roadway itself, and on the plinth of the monument. All heads were bared or bowed. The vans and tramcars in the background came to a sudden halt.

"In the awe-inspiring hush, the rattle of a restless horse's hoofs on the cobbles of a side street close at hand echoed clearly across the open space. Then, in the whole of that great square, for the space of full two minutes,