Armistice Day
 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armistice_Day

Armistice Day is commemorated every year on 11 November to mark the armistice signed between the Allies of World War I and Germany at Compiègne, France, for the cessation of hostilities on the Western Front of World War I, which took effect at eleven o'clock in the morning—the "eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" of 1918. The armistice initially expired after a period of 36 days. A formal peace agreement was only reached when the Treaty of Versailles was signed the following year.[1]

There was a time when people thought war was terrible enough to resist engaging in.

Remember Everyone Deployed

Fun thing I just learned: there were 10,944 casualties (2,738 deaths) between the signing of the armistice and it actually taking effect, just so "11:00 on 11/11" could look cool in history books.

Warmongers are dicks even when they're trying to be peacemongers.

So they fell 56 casualties short … picky, picky.

The hostilities didn't cease, they just moved to...

which was as hostile, vindictive and punitive as possible setting the stage for the rank and file grunts to get butchered again.

"This is not a peace. It is an armistice for twenty years".

--Marshal Ferdinand Foch, June 28th 1919

Some of the most prophetic words ever uttered. The Second World War started twenty years and 65 days later.

The Don sat there stone faced and fuming when Emmanuel Macron so accurately defined a glaring difference between nationalism and patriotism.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

—John McCrae, May 1915

War is hell...

Can anyone make sense of the car-shaped form at the back of the Esplanade behind the soldiers, in the same place in both pictures?

I might be a car. Or a hole in the wall.

Damn.


Looks like a car sat there for years...

Also, the branches on the trees (far right) didn't change a single leaf... One of those photos is edited.

At least the bottom pic. That rank of soldiers (particularly the one on the end) doesn't cast the same shadow as the lone person facing them.

Sure looks like a car:

Attachment 65600

The dude in front is from the original, the line of men was taken somewhere else and added in behind the dude. I guess after four years of war, when they said come back to the castle so we can take your picture, the answer was a negative string of naughty words.