Handed in at 175 Brigade Office 10:00 hrs – received 10:05 hrs
To 12th BATTALION
Hostilities cease 11:00 today [aaa] Troops will stand fast on the
outpost line already established [aaa] All military precautions will be
observed and there will be no communication with the enemy [aaa] Further
instructions later [aaa] Acknowledge
…and of course…
The English and French headlines are both easy. What the German one says is: “Acceptance of Armistice Terms. Kaiser Interned. Hindenburg on the Run.”
But not soon enough.
Not soon enough at all.
These dates tell their own story.
George Edwin Ellison, 5th Royal Irish Lancers, British Army – killed
09:30 am
11/11/18.
Augustin Joseph Trébuchon, 415e Régiment d’Infanterie, Armée de Terre Française – killed 10:50 am
11/11/18.
George Lawrence Price, 28th Battalion (Northwest), Canadian Expeditionary Force – killed 10:58 am 11/11/18.
Henry John Gunther,
313th Infantry Regiment, American Expeditionary Forces – killed 10:59 am 11/11/18.
At least those men had names, and their relatives knew what had happened.
Others were less fortunate.
Many didn’t get even anonymous graves and headstones. Their bodies were lost, to exploding shells, ever-present mud and a shifting battlefront, until only names and memories remained.
Those names have sunlight and clean rain at the Thiepval Memorial…
They have bugles every evening at the Menin Gate…
And the memory of them has the song of skylarks, above Flanders fields where poppies still grow where they fell.
“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.”
Remember.
One hundred years ago today. Here’s Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, the Latin mass intercut with Wilfred Owen poems:
One of my crowning moments of tiny!Aud sass was when I was seven or eight. I had just come out of the apartment with my arms full of My Little Ponies that I wanted to put in the backseat of the car. I asked my dad to open the door for me, but he was busy with something in the front seat and said, without looking at me, “Hold your horses!”
I said “I AM HOLDING MY HORSES.” and he finally turned around to look at me with my little face peeking out from behind ALL THESE RAINBOW PONIES and we both busted up laughing.
A professor asked if I prefer “Miss” or “Mister” (because nb) and I accidentally said “ya boi” without thinking so now I have a professor that calls me “ya boi Rogers” every time I see him.
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