Armistice Day
November 11, 2013
SPENCER WARREN writes:
There are a number of moving stories and live links at the BBC website of the commemoration of the 95th anniversary of the Great War armistice. All of Britain stops to observe two minutes of silence at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. This and their practice of wearing poppies were abandoned long ago in our country.
The images brought tears to my eyes. This is perhaps the most traditional public ritual still practiced.
On my visits long ago to Harrow and Winchester School, as on public memorials in Britain, I noted how the World War II dead were an appendage to the far greater number of dead from the First World War, or the Great War.
— Comments —
Karl D. writes:
Spencer Warren Said:
“On my visits long ago to Harrow and Winchester School, as on public memorials in Britain, I noted how the World War II dead were an appendage to the far greater number of dead from the First World War, or the Great War.”
Very true. I am always amazed at the woeful ignorance of many young and older Americans alike when it comes to the First World War. It ranks in their minds somewhere along the Spanish American war in historical importance. The two biggies they tend to know are the Civil War and World War Two. World War Two could not have happened without the first and we still feel its repercussions to this very day!
Somewhere there is a great photo of my great Grandfather sitting atop a WWI war horse in his doughboy uniform. He served in the Meuse-Argonne offensive. Due to the horrors that he witnessed he was never the same when he came back and became a hopeless alcoholic. There are a few good films about WWI out there if you can find them available. One is called “The Big Parade” and the other is an anti-war film by Abel Gance called “J’accuse”. He did a silent version and then a talkie with the same title later on. They were both brilliant though I prefer the talk version personally.
Pete F. writes:
Reading the story above concerning Armistice Day ceremonies in Britain and the Commonwealths, I cannot help but recall that these events, too, have been stained by the taint of political correctness. In the present day, if one listens to the assorted media commentators, politicians, and members of the royal family speaking about the sacrifices of British/Commonwealth soldiers in the Great War, one hears numerous references to the sacrifices of “British and Commonwealth servicemen and women who lost their lives” and comments in a similar vein – despite the fact that none of the combatants sent women into battle. Indeed, the notion of sending women over the top and into “No Man’s Land” would have been morally repugnant to the people of that time.
Great Britain and the Commonwealths (Canada, Australia/New Zealand, India, South Africa) sustained an estimated 897,000 killed-in-action, and another 2,115,000 wounded-in-action for a total of three million casualties sustained during the war (1). Not a single one of these combatants was a woman – yet, the British Broadcasting Company (BBC), Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) and other media persistently refer to British/CW “servicemen and women” lost. While it is true that women made a substantial contribution to the war effort working in munitions plants, and caring for the wounded in rear-area hospitals – and deserve recognition for their sacrifices on that basis – it is simply wrong to accord them unearned parity with men when the Great War is remembered. Feminists in the United Kingdom have even managed to get erected a WWI memorial especially for women!
A historian could call politically-correct modern-day statements about women’s role in the war “ahistorical,” meaning that the BBC and other media commentators are guilty of projecting today’s values/social mores into the past where they did not exist or existed only marginally. If one examines the historical literature – in particular primary-source documents of that time – it is clearly-evident that members of the women’s suffrage movement were concerned not with fighting alongside men in the trenches, but in such issues as voting, workplace safety, and public health. No matter, however; today’s cultural left has an agenda to promote and the facts of history cannot be allowed to stand in its way.
