Yes 1111am on 11/11/18 was the official ceasefire time.Was watching a WW1 in Colour programme on TV earlier .I find WW1 colour images unbelievably evocative ...It seems soooo much further away in time than WW2 .In many ways WW1 seems closer to Waterloo than WW2 .Certainly the START of WW1 and the END of WW2 seem aeons apart...
Such senseless carnage ,troops being mowed down by MGs but above all else (and what killed the vast majority was ) the artillery ...shell shock must have been crippling !Poor brave men (and plenty of women ,nurses etc too Im sure)
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 gas-shells dropping softly 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 flound'ring 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
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.