Specter of new conflict haunts World War I observances

Red poppy flowers were dropped onto soldiers, politicians and onlookers from across the world gathered in western Belgium on Tuesday to commemorate the end of World War I.

- SAM MCNEIL

PAUL ELLIS AFP/Getty Images CATHERINE, Princess of Wales, at a Remembrance Day service in England.

They laid wreaths at a newly renovated memorial for the fallen in Ypres, the Belgian town that earned the grim honor of being synonymous with the brutality of conflict.

Tuesday is known as Armistice Day — or Veterans Day in the United States and Remembrance Day in Britain, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa — marking the end of World War I.

Soldiers from New Zealand to Canada paraded through town toward the Menin Gate, a massive stone memorial inscribed with the names of tens of thousands of soldiers who were killed but left without graves.