Armistice Day

 Subject: Armistice Day

Today is Armistice Day when at 11 o'clock the guns fell silent on the battle fields and an end called to the bloody battle of the First World War. Remembrance Sunday is another name for today but unlike in the past, the virus has cancelled the most important part of the act of remembrance, the slow procession of old men who, whilst not having fought in the First represent an ever decreasing number who had fought in the Second.

The streets were empty and strangely silent. The wreaths were laid by the usual collection of royalty and government heads, the service chiefs and the people representing the commonwealth who had sent soldiers in their thousands to fight on our behalf. The bugle sounded the Last Post and the Chaplin repeated the words of service which seemed to conflict with what War is really about, killing, as if God would approve.

The enormity of  the sacrifice in human lives in the hideous trench warfare of the First World War  was brushed under the carpet by the executive branch and only came to light through the poetry of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen both men who had served in the trenches and were horrified by what they saw. Owen and Sassoon are withering in their condemnation of the human carnage, the blood and the gore, the putrid corpses left to be pounded into unrecognisable human detritus by guns firing from both sides, the choking man who had failed to get his mask on before the mustard gas submerged him in a yellow mist. This unfailing imbecility of committing men out of the trenches into no man's land which as the name suggest is fit for no man.

The officer Class imbued with pips on their shoulders give the orders, orders which for the ranks meant death and disfigurement for a hundred metres of land which represented a salient on their grubby map and inconsequential when compared to the toll on human life.

"He crouched and flinched with galloping fear,

Sick for escape loathing the strangled horror

The butchered frantic gestures of the dead.

Lost in a blurred confusion of yells and groans

Down and down and down he sank and drowned

Bleeding to death, the attack had failed.

The smug faced crowds with kindling eye

Who cheer when soldier lads march by

Sneak home and pray you'll never know

The hell were youth and laughter go.

Sent from my iPad