Veterans Day 2021

In the early morning hours of November 11, 1918, representatives of France, Britain, and Germany met in a railroad car near Compeigne, France, To sign an armistice ending World War I, or The Great War, as it was known at that time. The cease-fire took effect at 11:00am that day - The 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. Up and down the trenches, after four long years of the most horrific fighting the world had yet known, the guns fell silent. “The roar stopped like a motor car hitting a wall,“ one U.S. soldier wrote to his family. Soldiers on both sides slowly climbed out of the earthworks. Some danced; some cheered; some cried for joy; some stood numbed. The Great War had left some 9 million soldiers dead and another 21 million wounded. No one knows how many millions of civilians died. Much of Europe lay in ruins. But finally, with the armistice, it was “all quiet on the Western Front.“