The Eleveth Hour, the eleventh day, the eleventh month.

[Silly Moustache]

11/11/18 - the Armistice.
The end of WW1, and the day annually that we honour all those in the Great War and all wars since, in which the British, Empire and Commonwealth people served.

I don't know if it is commemorated in the USA or not.

I'm watching a special edition of The Antiques Roadshow in which folks bring along photos, medals and more importantly stories of gran and great grandfathers, and mothers, who served between 1914-1918.

The firs was a Sikh gentleman who volunteered to serve in the trenches as a surgeon. He was 55 when he arrived in France from India. He was shot twice in the back and stomach, but still managed to drag the wounded soldier back to safety and operate on him. He lived until he was a hundred.

The story of a field nurse who drove ambulances back and forth to the front, collecting and treating the wounded.

An RFC airman's windscreen and his goggles both with a bullet holes.

An infantryman's helmet with a shrapnel hole and a leather lining made for him by his mother, which saved his life.

A genuine "Saving Pt, Ryan" story of an Australian soldier,the last surviving of three brothers, who was taken off the line and sent home to his mother.

A hand written message sent out at 10.20 a.m ordering an end to action in 40 minute's time , on ... 11.11.18.

The Spanish flu epidemic which killed so many survivors, waiting to be demobbed, and,of course it spread all over the UK, the Empire and, I believe, the USA also.

The owner of a violin built in 1915, by a man who joined the Duke Of Wellington's West Riding Regiment and died in the trenches two years later.

I'll be wearing my poppy again this year.

[Jim Owen]

Hi Andrew,
For reasons that escape me, in the US it’s called “Veterans Day.” The clock towers should ring at the correct time. I’ve seen fewer poppies in recent years. I wear one.

The flu did reach the US, turning my paternal grandfather into an orphan. It created many orphans. The epidemic was so terrible that it was more or less erased from history; folks didn’t speak of it.

There’s still debate on where it started. It didn’t come from Spain, though. Spanish newspapers weren’t censored. They first reported on it.

[MrDB]

Nov 11 was Armistice Day in the USA for many years, then was changed to Veterans Day a number of years ago to honor veterans of all wars.

All Gave Some. Some Gave All.

I fly an extra flag on 11 Nov.

[Borderdon]

Canada, of course, has always observed Rememberance Day, and rightly so.
Anecdotally, the crowds at the respective cenotaphs/memorials grow ever larger each year.
The poppy is seen everywhere


Don

[Nyghthawk]

The first of the "Wars to end all wars." 100 years. Yes we will remember.

I read about the epidemic when I was an adult. It was left out of my several American history classes.

[Silurian]

I recently saw a BBC documentary, The Flu That Killed 50 Million.

It was claimed that patient zero was a young farmer from Haskell County, Kansas named Albert Gitchell. He was recruited and worked in the kitchens of a large army camp in Kansas. The virus spread and mutated. Hundreds in the camp became sick and several dozen died.

The virus spread eastwards towards the ports and was carried by infected soldiers on troop carriers to France in March 1918. Several hundred became sick on one carrier and a great many died.

I have no idea what research these claims were based on.

[Earl49]

I haven't seen poppies in a long time, but used to wear them every year as a kid. They have somehow disappeared from fashion.

Almost every house on my street flies the flag on Veteran's Day and Memorial Day in late May. US Marine Corps across the street, retired career Air Force next door, retired US Coast Guard on the other side, and we are a Navy home. Our ukulele club does a medley of all the service anthems every November, and when we play for the Vet's home.

[yairimann]

Nov 4 1918 was the day Wilfred Owen was killed, his parents received the postman bringing the notice of his death just as the church bells started peeling to signal the end of the great war, the war to end all wars. I buy lots of poppies because I lose them almost as fast as I buy them.

[frankmcr]

Many people I think get it wrong, it was not called "the war to end all wars" which at least in US English means "the biggest war of all", it was called

"the war to end war"

meaning "we'll just win this one and then militarism will be defeated and we'll all have peace ever after".

[Bob Womack]

I fly my flag and wear a poppy. Besides the national and international significance my family lost a serviceman son and had another serviceman son in WWII.


Bob

[viccortes285]

My Flag will be flying.Respect

[FrankHudson]

The US made the switch from Armistice Day to Veterans Day for the 11th in the early 50s. I don't know exactly why, but by then the WWI vets were getting on in years and there were a lot of WWII vets, and I'm supposing that it seemed unfair that the day honored one World War over the other.

As it so happens, I've been building up to this November 11th for a few years as I work on a project that combines words (mostly poetry) with new music in various ways. Copyright issues are clumsy for work from 1923 on, even when one can identify who owns the copyright, and if you mention music the owners get especially funny (I suppose the idea that this could be a Broadway show or Adelle is going to be singing the words enters into things, rather than my somewhat smaller audience).

Anyway, that means that I use a lot of stuff from the WWI era as it's all in the Public Domain, and it's fascinating to me (as most momentous things would be if looked at closely). You get the English "War Poets," so the experience of the war is reported directly in poetry in a variety of styles (in a way that few wars have ever been reported since, for complex reasons). And the World War I experience touched nearly every writer working then, even if they didn't write from the trenches. It's very easy to see how literary Modernism (already emerging) was bent by WWI's gravitational pull. Stuff you wouldn't expect. Music too (though I haven't told that tale as much), specifically because American music has such a large Afro-American component and WWI kicked off a number things in that regard.

Bottom line for this mid-century born person. Just as 21st Century folks don't understand how a great deal of what is present and in current dispute flows back to the middle of the of the 20th Century, a great deal of our world growing up was formed by the turn of the 19th to 20th Century era. and that first great War of the 20th Century.

[Silly Moustache]

Originally Posted by Earl49

I haven't seen poppies in a long time, but used to wear them every year as a kid. They have somehow disappeared from fashion.

Almost every house on my street flies the flag on Veteran's Day and Memorial Day in late May. US Marine Corps across the street, retired career Air Force next door, retired US Coast Guard on the other side, and we are a Navy home. Our ukulele club does a medley of all the service anthems every November, and when we play for the Vet's home.

In the UK we tend not to fly flags, but poppies are made and sold by "The British Legion" or "The Royal British Legion (RBL), sometimes called The British Legion or The Legion, is a British charity providing financial, social and emotional support to members and veterans of the British Armed Forces, their families and dependents". (From Wikipedia)

I looked in our kitchen "untidy draw" for some rubber bands recently and found a bunch of paper poppies bought in previous years, but they mustn't be reused but re - purchased every year, to aid and support the charity.

Recently there are also "white and "purple" poppies being sold.

White ones are supposed to represent a pacifist poit of view and stand for remembrance of ALL people affected by wars (which is all of us to varying degrees of course).

Purple poppies are to commemorate all animals which suffered due to war.

I think that these are a distraction from what the Royal British legion is doing and so will not consider anything but my red poppy.

[reeve21]

My grandfather lost his mother and a sister in the flu epidemic here in Connecticut. I only know about it because he told me. I don't remember hearing about it (or much about WWI) in school, and I took every history course I could.

Our town has a memorial forest dedicated to the veterans who lost their lives in the "great" war. Most of the land was gifted shortly after the war, and it can never be developed. It is almost 300 acres, now surrounded by suburbia.

Ironically, during the second world war a pilot on a training mission crash landed and was killed in the forest. He was credited as a hero for steering his plane away from the nearby populated areas.

There is a memorial to him inside the forest, and here is a nice little blog post with pictures from a guy who taught his kids some stuff they won't learn in school. http://www.ctmq.org/lt-vincent-h-core-memorial/

[Daniel Grenier]

My father was with the Canadian Engineers during the entire war in Europe. My uncle was with the Infantry also for the entire war. Both made it back. My father rarely talked about it. My uncle never, ever talked about it.

I have a box full of a German Forces memorabilia he, my uncle, brought back with him. I must assume from dead German soldiers he would have come across, or killed himself being at the very front & all. I’ll never know more as he, and my father, are dead now.

I was in the Air Force for 26+ years and never encountered hostility, I am pleased to say, but I have always had deep connections and respect on November 11. I was on many a Remembrance parade and attend services every year since retiring in 1995. I will be there this year too.

Lest we forget.