Armistice Day

On this day, Armistice Day, or Remembrance Day, we commemorate the cessation of hostilities during World War I (but not the end of the war—at least between Germany and the Allied Powers—, which officially ended when The Treaty of Versailles was signed on 28 June, 1919*).  In the US, Armistice Day—remembering peace as well as the sacrifice of soldiers—has become Veterans Day—remembering the service of soldiers.

In Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions, or Goodbye Blue Monday! (1973) Philboyd Studge writes:

When I was a boy [...] all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.
It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another.  I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute.  They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God.  So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.
Armistice Day has become Veterans’ Day.  Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans’ Day is not.
So I will throw Veterans’ Day over my shoulder.  Armistice Day I will keep.  I don’t want to throw away any sacred things.

*  alternatively, some may consider that the First World War ended last year, when Germany finally paid the last of its reparations.

Revised Scenes from History, Nº 1

Were People in the Great War As Enlightened As Modern Folk

[An officer, in a clean, well-tailored uniform, saunters into a filthy trench, somewhere near Passchendaele, in 1917, shortly before a scheduled attack.]

  

Sergeant:  Officer present! Attention! Sah!

Occupational Health & Safety Officer:  At ease, men; standing to attention is bad for the back. Ah, good, those ladders seem well placed and properly supported.  Now are your weapons nice and safe?  Ammunition safely put away?

Sergeant:  Sah, yes, sah!

Occupational Health & Safety Officer:  You, Private—

Sergeant:  Hatkins, sah!

Occupational Health & Safety Officer:  Ah, Atkins, is your bayonet clean? We don’t want an enemy to catch a nasty infection.

Pvt. Hatkins:  Clean, sir, and sharp, sir!

Occupational Health & Safety Officer:  Sharp?  Sharp!

Sergeant:  Well-honed, sah, razor-edged, ὀξύς, acutus—

Occupational Health & Safety Officer:  Yes, yes, I know.  Are any other bayonets similarly sharpened, Sergeant?

Sergeant:  Why, all of them are, of course, sah.  We must all be keen, and I always keep a sharp look-out, sah!

Occupational Health & Safety Officer:  But we can’t have that—someone may get hurt!   Dull these bayonets immediately!

  

[After a few seconds of stunned immobility, a few of the soldiers begin to strike their bayonets against rocks.]

  

Occupational Health & Safety Officer:  Hey, what are you doing? Stop!  That’s dangerous!  Someone could put out an eye!

Pvt. Hatkins:  We have no proper tools with us here, sir.

Occupational Health & Safety Officer:  Sergeant, I leave it to you to ensure that these men dull their bayonets, and safely; but I don’t want to hear that you’ve been shouting at them.  It could harm their hearing, and it lowers their self-esteem.  I, meanwhile, have an appointment to meet Field-Marshall Haig; I must talk to him about this foolhardy practice of firing artillery shells.  Farewell, men.

  

[The officer departs.  The men murmur and mutter.]

  

Sergeant:  All right, shaarp, you lot; you heard the officer, we need to devise a tool to blunt the bayonets.

Pvt. Hatkins:  How, Sarge?

Sergeant:  Men, form a file.