Armistice Day. A Warning

One hundred and five years ago today, on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month the nations tearing huge chunks of Europe to pieces ceased hostilities on the western front. A formal peace agreement was reached the following year with the Treaty of Versailles. The whole world could stop and breath again. Yet, Armistice Day is widely ignored in America.

Obviously American losses were relatively light compared to European. And more American soldiers died from disease, 63,314 (mostly influenza) compared to 53,402. But, they were all equally dead. And, the road to the hereafter was a tortuous trail through a ditch filled with water, anguish, infection and fear.

Soldiers in WWI had to live life underground, listening to the sounds of shrieking metal as it flew inches above the surface, or came barreling in from a distant artillery emplacement. If you were lucky enough to avoid the angry pieces of steel your companions were rats, immersion foot and constant misery.

Offensives were useless, not that they didn’t try. The Battle of Verdun, fought between the 21st of February and the 18th of December in 1916 resulted in small geographic gains and losses repeated on a loop between the French and German armies. In the end both sides ended up pretty much where they started. One remarkable change, though, over 377 thousand French and 337 thousand German soldiers were dead.

Imagine, for a minute, the absolute madness of “going over the top” leaving the uncomfortable, but relatively safe confines of the trench, and crawling on your stomach through the mud, with the scream of bullets and the freight train whistle of cannon shells a constant sound track until the one “you never hear” finds you and leaves your lifeless corpse laying there blocking the path for the poor bastard crawling behind you. Knowing full well the gains made would be measured in feet, and would in all likelihood be temporary. Soldiers knew the madness, and the cruelty, and the awesome, unforgivable stupidity, but they overcame their fear and followed orders.

And it was like that everywhere. It was conceivably possible to walk 475 miles from the English Channel to the border of Switzerland and never walk above ground. Of course, that assumes you lived long enough to walk that far. That you weren’t ripped to pieces by a lucky shell, or smothered by mustard gas, or taken down by disease, or killed in a suicide offensive from the enemy.

There were no respites between battles, they were constantly engaged, and they served proudly, in filth, squalor, and fear. And they deserve to be remembered.

“We are the dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved and now we lie,

In Flanders Field.”

By John McCrae

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Previously Published on Life, Explained

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