Remembrance Day

Wednesday, November 12th, 2008

Yesterday was Remembrance Day; it's been that way since 1919. The date was chosen because it is the anniversary of the cease fire at the end of World War I. The actual cease fire was at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the year 1918. Rather neat that, I thought at first and then I thought hang on here, did they postpone the end just to get a neat timing for people to remember? Like was it, 'carry on killing each other chaps, we don't want to finish at 10.43 am on the 9th. Nobody will ever remember that.'

So I did some research and I find that the armistice was signed at 5am that day. 6 hours then. I guess that wasn't so bad given the state of telecommunications in those days and those conditions. I suppose some troops could have been told to quit earlier but I for one would not have leapt out of the trenches jumping for joy until I was certain that the other side knew it was all over.

We had our only three survivors at the service in Whitehall yesterday. One of them is the last survivor of fighting in the trenches and another is the sole survivor of the Battle of Jutland. The third was still in training when the war finished but he went on to fight in WWII.

Pity we didn't have a few survivors from the Afghan Wars of the 19th century. They could have told us at first hand why we are wasting our fucking time there today.

Well, we still carry on killing each other so there will be no shortage of future veterans.