Armistice Day

[John Galt]

100 years is so long ago yet also so recent. So much death and destruction. 10 million dead soliders. So much death and we are still dealing with the fallout of it.

A great grandfather of mine served. He was part of the Argonne offensive, the largest American offensive in history, which pushed this whole thing to reach a ceasefire. But it wasn't true peace, only a 20 year respite. His daughter then served in the second world war. The centuries of savagery of Europeans was finally pacified with American might and surviving Europeans coming together in an economic union. These ties across the Atlantic and across countries have kept the continent largely free of war, and certainly nothing like the world wars has happened since.

If you haven't watched it, the 255pt weekly update on the war on The Great Was channel on YouTube was spectacular. It has specials as well so there is far more content than just a weekly update

Macron lecturing Trump about nationalism was good but it was a good speech in general and worth a watch as well. Having never been to France I didn't realize that the tomb of the unknown solider is under the Arc de Triomphe, where the ceremony took place.

[Winchester]

My youngest son got me onto these podcasts by Dan Carlin. The WWI ones are fantastic. I'm still kind of stunned by the magnitude of the brutality and misery. I honestly think he did for WWI what Ken Burns did for the Civil War albeit in a different format.

https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardc ... ageddon-i/

[Saz]

Really hard to fully comprehend what an incredible conflict WW1 truly was. It decimated Europe unlike anything before or since. My family fled their village in WW1 and moved to the big city. They left the city in ww2 back to the village. Ww2 was bad but for countries like England and France we are talking 250k casualties vs several million. Even in England every village still has some ww1 monument and no shit half the time half the town was wiped out in the war. I’m talking towns of 500 with over 100 names on the memorial. Shit My old secretary’s grandfather was the only one of 6 brother to survive the war. Imagine that, 6 sons and you lose them all over 4 years - probably in an afternoon to be honest.

It’s all so hard to comprehend today given what Europe is like now but the Great War was savage. I still maintain it was just the first bout of a grand European civil war... but the church in my families town still has bloodstains all on one wall. The Germans shot a few townspeople in ww1 and shot the priests against the same wall in ww2. Its still the town church and we all used to play in the garden just outside as kids.

If you have ever visited any of the battlefields it’s also just absurd. I went to Ypres and as part of the museum they literally dig out about 30 feet of earth and slapped glass on it so you could see everything underground. Untouched, just a random sample of a field, and for 30 feet it was just bones, shell casings, canteens, pocket watches. You take a look at the horizon and the earth is still clearly pockmarked and upturned from the war. As far as the eye can see.

I was flying but at 11.11 BA turned on the cabin lights and gave everyone champagne. Even the economy bros. Touching gesture but I will worry. Europe had been at peace for 50 years before ww2, the world and technology had lept so far people couldn’t even imagine what a full scale war would look like. And yet when it game down to it, every single man in a town would be enlisted and half of them would die in a 15 minute attack for some hill they couldn’t even pronounce. It reminds me a lot of the current era. We think it can’t happen until it does.

[NAB]

[Spider]

Agreed about The Great War channel. As a complete effort, it's easily one of the greatest documentaries on WW1. Hope that team does more good work.

[exploited]

For years afterwards the farmers found them –
the wasted young, turning up under their plough blades
as they tended the land back into itself.

A chit of bone, the china plate of a shoulder blade,
the relic of a finger, the blown
and broken bird’s egg of a skull,

all mimicked now in flint, breaking blue in white
across this field where they were told to walk, not run,
towards the wood and its nesting machine guns.

And even now the earth stands sentinel,
reaching back into itself for reminders of what happened
like a wound working a foreign body to the surface of the skin.

This morning, twenty men buried in one long grave,
a broken mosaic of bone linked arm in arm,
their skeletons paused mid dance-macabre

in boots that outlasted them,
their socketed heads tilted back at an angle
and their jaws, those that have them, dropped open.

As if the notes they had sung
have only now, with this unearthing,
slipped from their absent tongues.

[Circe]

so this is wut a faggotry circlejerk looks liek shame ur grandmas weren't raepd and killed then

[jimmyz]

[Spider]

[exploited]