I have grown up referring to today as Armistice Day.
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The term "armistice" means a cessation of hostilities as a prelude to peace negotiations. In the context of the First World War 'the armistice' is generally referred to in context of the agreement between the Germans and the Allies to end the war on November 11, 1918.

However the most significant armistice was signed at 5 a.m. on the morning of 11 November 1918, and came into effect six hours later at 11 a.m. (hence the oft-quoted 'eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month'). Click here for a transcript of the armistice terms.
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Once again it is grey and raining here in Vancouver. In a few hours the Remembrance Ceremony Music will drone and the clink of the medals of very elderly men who fought in WWII will reinforce the respect for those we are remembering.


They shall grow not old, as we who 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.
--Lawrence Binyon


Dulce Et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

--Wilfred Owen


To save your world you asked this man to die; Would this man, could he see you now,
ask why?: W. H. Auden: "Epitaph for an Unknown Soldier"


Survivors
No doubt they'll soon get well; the shock and strain
Have caused their stammering, disconnected talk.
Of course they're 'longing to go out again,' —
These boys with old, scared faces, learning to walk.
They'll soon forget their haunted nights; their cowed
Subjection to the ghosts of friends who died,—
Their dreams that drip with murder; and they'll be proud
Of glorious war that shatter'd all their pride...
Men who went out to battle, grim and glad;
Children, with eyes that hate you, broken and mad.

Siegfried Sassoon

Rain and Remembrance

Ypers, Passchendale, The Somme, Verdun, Mons...
names engraved in my DNA
...and when the bagpipes wail
as the wind and the ever-present rain...

as bitter as any that fell in the Somme and Ypers...

soaks through the grey flannel pants
of the old men on their last legs
as they stand at attention crying silently and unashamedly,
remembering fallen comrades.

The haunting call of 'The Last Post' rings out over the brap-brap
of restored Curtiss, Fokker, and Sopwith engines,
flying in broken wing formation over the silent city.

Two minutes of silence...

on the 11th day of the 11th month...

the haunting words flood back to everyone....

" ...at the going down of the sun,
and in the morning,
we shall remember them...."

And the young boy-soldiers,
in uniform,
stand straight,
having been informed this is officially "important",
but too young to understand why
these old men are crying
when they have been honoured.

And they understand even less...
when they see them, hours later, blind drunk in messes
all over the city... crying and laughing,
into the unending drinks
those who remember have bought for them .

JF


"And death is welcome, and death comes - and death is a quiet step into a sweet clean midnight."
- Marshall Davila, circa 1963