Today is Armistice Day (Remembrance Day)

London Evening Standard ^ | 11/11/25 | Lola Christina Alao | Sian Baldwin

[RandFan]

“At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them,” Laurence Binyon wrote.

His words in his poem For the Fallen have become timeless and are read every year on Remembrance Sunday as Britain comes together to pay respect to all those who have died in conflict since the First World War.

Some 107 years after WWI ended, those words still hold power today while reminding people about the lives sacrificed for peace.

The first Armistice Day was observed on November 11, 1919, to mark the first anniversary of the end of the First World War.

Remembrance Sunday has been held ever since on the nearest Sunday to November 11, which this year took place on Sunday November 9.

Veterans, leaders, and civillians all gathered at the Cenotaph to pay tribute in the annual Armistice Day commemoration.

The poem is better known in the US where it is read on Veterans Day and Memorial Day:

“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.”

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TOPICS: Chit/Chat; Conspiracy; History
KEYWORDS:

[RandFan]

Freepers, today marks 107 years after WWI ended. Please remember the fallen.

[kiryandil]

[READINABLUESTATE]

The Armistice Day Blizzard.
Two survivors recall the Armistice Day Blizzard of 1940 ...
It is estimated that around 85 duck hunters died in the Armistice Day blizzard, although the exact number is unknown. The total death toll for the storm was between 159 and 210, with the hunters representing a significant portion of the victims. They were caught by the sudden storm while on the Mississippi River and its surrounding areas, and many were unable to reach safety due to the extreme cold, high winds, and rough waves.
Two survivors recall the Armistice Day Blizzard of 1940 ...
It is estimated that around 85 duck hunters died in the Armistice Day blizzard, although the exact number is unknown. The total death toll for the storm was between 159 and 210, with the hunters representing a significant portion of the victims. They were caught by the sudden storm while on the Mississippi River and its surrounding areas, and many were unable to reach safety due to the extreme cold, high winds, and rough waves.

[Telepathic Intruder]

All their fighting and dying will be in vain if Britain’s population is replaced by invading immigrants who don’t value freedom or western values, and the government continues to prosecute anyone who raises a voice against it.

[kiryandil]

Thanks! Never heard of that, or that is what got the Fitzgerakld.

[Fireone]

My father was one of the brave pilots who flew from the Winona, MN airport, up to the Weaver river bottoms to spot the stranded hunters. He and his buddies were all students, and employees of Max Conrad, Minnesota’s flying Grandfather.
Many articles have been written about the amazing rescue of those stranded hunters.

[BroJoeK]

The First World War death count is usually put around 20 million, not including the 1918 "Spanish" Flu Pandemic which took another circa 50 million lives.

Of the war deaths, only 117,000 were American soldiers, which sounds like a minor contribution, but they were all concentrated in the war's final months and represented casualty rates for American units much higher than other countries' rates for comparable periods of time.

Americans delivered the decisive blow at war's end which finally broke German lines and delivered victory to the Allies.

"Victory" at least in Allied eyes but not necessarily defeat in German eyes.
Germans asked for an armistice -- they wanted to freeze the lines in place -- but the Allies delivered the 1919 Versailles Treaty which took more from Germany than Germans believed their wartime results merited.
After all, no Allied troops had crossed into German territory, so Germans wanted Pres. Wilson's promised "Peace Without Victory".

Many Allied leaders, including US Commanding General John Pershing, believed the Allies should not have accepted the 11/11/1918 Armistice, but should rather have pushed on to Berlin, to convince Germans that they had been defeated and so deserved the harsh peace terms.

Pershing & others believed that if Germany were not properly defeated in 1918, then in 20 years, Germans would rise up again for Round Two.

French Marshal Ferdinand Foch famously warned in 1919 that the Versailles Treaty was merely “an armistice for twenty years”.

Foch was wrong about 20 years.
It was actually 20 years, two months and 4 days until September 1, 1939.

[jerod]

The poem you quote at the end is actually by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae of the Canadian Medical Corps who served and died in World War I.

In Flanders Fields

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.

Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae

[DFG]

The armistice that ended World War I was signed in a railway carriage in the Forest of Compiègne, France. The agreement was negotiated and signed by Allied and German representatives in Marshal Ferdinand Foch’s private train carriage at the Rethondes Clearing within the forest.

In 1940, the main armistice ending the war in France was also signed in Compiègne on June 22 on the same railway carriage that had also been used for the 1918 armistice. The location was deliberately chosen by Hitler to humiliate France. The Germans later destroyed the original carriage.

[jerod]

[Redleg Duke]

My maternal Grandfather fought in the Trenches of France in WWI with the 42nd Infantry Division (Rainbow). He was wounded in the leg by a German artillery shell that resulted in bone fragments that continued to work out long after he came home and married my Grandmother. She told me how she would be woken up by his crying in pain and the blood soaking the sheets.

He was a charter member of the American Legion in Wonewoc, Wisconsin. She was a charter member of the Auxiliary. She used to make Tray favors for the wounded vets at the VA Hospital nearby. Grandpa always played taps at the cemetery on Armistice Day. My Uncle Bob, his youngest son still plays it on this day and sends us a video of it. I was blessed to have veterans in my family who raised me, taught me and encouraged me to accept the honor of serving in their footsteps. To all my fellow Vets, thank you for your service and for “taking up the torch”!

[FroggyTheGremlim]

My father fought in WWI. Argonne Forest. He was wounded by German machine gun fire in his left leg Sept 18, 1918. He was taken to field hospitals in Belgium, then France. He was in a coma for almost a year, thought he was dead, when a nurse noticed small breath indications on a mirror. He was revived, ultimately sent to army hospital in Carlisle, PA.

He walked with a limp all his life.

He was also deaf, loss of over 90% of his hearing in both ears.

There was no GI Plan then, he was awarded a Purple Heart in the 1930’s and

received a BONUS of $60!!!

My Dad answered the call, fought for his country. He was a good man. I miss him.

[No name given]

And soon France and America will suffer the same fate.

[mund1011]

My Dad answered the call, fought for his country. He was a good man. I miss him.

+++++++++++

An amazing account of your fathers survival. Hard to put into words how incredible such a recovery was possible back then. Only with God was that possible.

[FroggyTheGremlim]

Only with God was that possible.

He was 50 when I was born. My mom always believed something was special.

[dfwgator]

1916 - Motorhead

16 years old when I went to the war
To fight for a land fit for heroes
God on my side, and a gun in my hand
Chasing my days down to zero

And I marched and I fought and I bled
And I died and I never did get any older
But I knew at the time that a year in the line
Was a long enough life for a soldier

We all volunteered
And we wrote down our names
And we added two years to our ages

Eager for life and ahead of the game
Ready for history’s pages

And we brawled and we fought
And we whored ‘til we stood
10, 000 shoulder to shoulder

A thirst for the Hun
We were food for the gun
And that’s what you are when you’re soldiers

I heard my friend cry
And he sank to his knees, coughing blood
As he screamed for his mother

And I fell by his side
And that’s how we died
Clinging like kids to each other

And I lay in the mud
And the guts and the blood
And I wept as his body grew colder

And I called for my mother
And she never came

Though it wasn’t my fault
And I wasn’t to blame

The day not half over
And 10, 000 slain, and now
There’s nobody remembers our names
And that’s how it is for a soldier

[dfwgator]

. The location was deliberately chosen by Hitler to humiliate France.

---

Revenge is a dish best served cold. Clemenceau and Hitler should be chained together forever in Hell.

[BroJoeK]

Redleg Duke: "My maternal Grandfather fought in the Trenches of France in WWI with the 42nd Infantry Division (Rainbow).
He was wounded in the leg..."

Thanks for sharing your history.
I can also find ancestors and relatives who served in every major US war, beginning with the Revolutionary War and including all since WWII.
All ancestors survived, or I wouldn't be here, but some were wounded or otherwise scarred.

The idea that in 1918 the Allies should have fought on to take Berlin was discussed at the time, but never seriously contemplated by national leaders.
The war was too horrible, the suffering & death toll too unimaginable to continue even a day longer than absolutely necessary.

[BroJoeK]

FroggyTheGremlim: "My father fought in WWI.
Argonne Forest.
He was wounded by German machine gun fire in his left leg Sept 18, 1918."

Thanks for sharing your history.
Ordinary citizens serving honorably are the reason America is what we are today.
It's also one reason our enemies (foreign & domestic) do their worst to destroy what it means to be an American citizen -- and to replace our ideals with a Marxist vision of eternal class warfare among "victims" and "oppressors" -- requiring never-ending obeisance and reparations to whoever claims they or their ancestors were somehow "oppressed".