11 AM, 11 / 11 / 18
Received from Brigade – PRIORITY – 11-11-18
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.
