"THIS DAY 100 YEARS AGO - PEACE ON THE WESTERN FRONT, NOVEMBER 11, 1918

—
“The sun shining down on these green fields of France
The warm wind blows gently and the red poppies dance
The trenches have vanished long under the plow
No gas, no barbed wire, no guns firing now
But here in this graveyard that’s still no man’s land
The countless white crosses in mute witness stand
To man’s blind indifference to his fellow man
And a whole generation were butchered and damned”

-Excerpt from Eric Bogle’s “No Man’s Land”

—

France, November 11, 1918.
A young German, mortally wounded, Has come to terms with his fate. While troops on either side were gathering their dead, an English soldier finds him, noticing the young German can only draw short breaths from his damaged lungs. While the English troop tries again and again to offer his aid, the German can only insist, in broken English, that there is no point.

His only wish is that he wants to see his brothers again.

He gazes off into the gradually dimming light of the sun, casting its rays down on an old battlefield once contested with blood and iron.

—

Ladies and gentlemen, the war has come to an end. On the 11th day on the 11th month, the 11th minute of the 11th hour, the armistice to call for a ceasefire on the Western Front went into effect, thus concluding the war.

In the four years the war flared, 40 million people were killed. At least 17 million of those were military personnel while the rest were civilian.

Newer technologies and strategies were introduced during this period, and would be a point in history that would mark the line between the use of older and newer ways to wage war.

It forged identities within different nations and tore down empires that lasted for centuries, effectively ushering in newer forms of government and introducing newer political ideas and conflicts. Said conflicts would create more strife, and pave the way for greater evils later in the century.

Hopefully we could all look back and see how much something such as the Great War affected our world today. Many stories stories of the war have been lost to history. However, we should not let it blind our judgement on how something such as this can alter the course of the world, even on a minuscule scale.

Or if it could happen again.

I’ll see you on frontlines of the next war. Godspeed all of you and have a good Veteran’s day."