The Cenotaph (London)

 cenotaph, war memorial

It was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, who conceived the idea from the name of a structure in Gertrude Jekyll's garden, and constructed from Portland stone between 1919 and 1920 by Holland, Hannen & Cubitts. It replaced Lutyens's identical wood-and-plaster cenotaph erected in 1919 for the Allied Victory Parade commissioned by David Lloyd George, and is a Grade I listed building. It is undecorated save for a carved wreath on each end and the words "The Glorious Dead", chosen by Rudyard Kipling.
On the Cenotaph are displayed a Union Flag, a White Ensign, and a Red Ensign on one side and a Union Flag, a White Ensign, and a Blue Ensign on the other side. On 1 April 1943, an RAF Ensign was substituted for the White Ensign on the west side of the monument. The flags displayed as of 2007 represent the Royal Navy, the British Army, the Royal Air Force, and the Merchant Navy.

The Cenotaph is the site of the annual National Service of Remembrance held at 11:00 a.m. on Remembrance Sunday, the closest Sunday to 11 November (Armistice Day).
An annual Remembrance Day service is held at the Cenataph in London in honour of the servicemen and women who died for their country.

More than one million men and women from Britain and the Commonwealth died in World War I between 1914 and 1918, and nearly 500,000 in World War II from 1939 to 1945.

And to this day men and women make the ultimate sacrifice for their country.

www.roll-of-honour.com/London/Cenotaph.html