Under a towering memorial to the thousands of men who died at Ypres during the first World War, 13 veterans waited to meet Queen Elizabeth yesterday.
It was a day of mixed emotions for the men - most aged 100 or more - marking the 80th anniversary of the day the guns finally fell silent.
Of the hundreds of thousands of men who fought at Ypres, most did not return home.
Engraved on the Menin Gate Memorial are the names of of the 55,000 soldiers whose remains were never identified and have no marked graves.
And after the final notes of the Last Post at yesterday's Service of Remembrance died away, a red shower of 55,000 poppy petals streamed down from the top of the gate.
The buglers who sounded The Last Post were members of the Ypres Fire Brigade. They were observing a ceremony they enact every day of the year, as their thanks to the Allies for the part they played here.
The famous Flanders rain did not fall yesterday and in the November sunshine people from around the world came to Ypres to remember those who fought and died in the Great War.
The veterans, whose numbers dwindle each year, remember better than anyone. One of them, Arthur Halestrap (99), faltered as he read the Exultation to those gathered for the service, including Queen Elizabeth and King Albert of Belgium.
"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 veterans, most of them in wheelchairs, grasped Queen Elizabeth's hands as she moved down the line greeting them.
Robert Burns, a veteran of the Battle of Loos, who is 103 tomorrow, told her: "I am just so pleased to be able to be here this afternoon, but I am thinking of the hundreds of thousands who cannot be here."
As dusk fell, some of the hundreds of people who had attended the remembrance ceremony stopped to collect a few of the poppy petals as a souvenir of a poignant day, many knowing that this anniversary is probably one of the last which will be attended by those who fought for peace and freedom in the Great War.