The Welford Road crowd paid tribute to The Fallen ahead of kick-off in Saturday’s European Challenge Cup match at the stadium.
As the players from Leicester Tigers and French visitors Pau lined up on the pitch for the closest fixture to Armistice Day, the club paid its respects alongside guests from the Royal Anglian Regiment, Tigers Veteran Association and Welbeck The Defence Sixth Form College.
Tigers, who have had links with the military throughout the club's 140-year history and have traced 50 former players killed in conflict during both World Wars, also hosted Colonel Lucy Giles, the first woman to be made commander at Sandhurst New College Military Academy in its 300-year history.
The military groups gathered on the pitch with the players, the Last Post was played by bugler Matthew Rowland, with the Exhortation recited by Roy Anthony Birch, of the Western Front Association, followed by a two-minute silence, Reveille and the Epitaph ahead of theb big game.
The Tigers playing shirts from the game carried the poppy logo and will be signed and auctioned in aid of the Tigers Foundation monument.
The Exhortation
An extract from the poem ‘For the Fallen’ written by Robert Laurence Binyon in 1914.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
The Kohima Epitaph
When you go home, tell them of us and say,
For your tomorrow, we gave our today.