11 November 1918, 11:00 a.m. -- Armistice

"Anthem for Doomed Youth" -- Wilfred Owen

"Aftermath" -- Siegfried Sassoon

When Europe succumbed to its worse instincts in that awful summer of 1914, the young men of its belligerent nations poured forth, offering themselves as blood sacrifices to appease the sanguine hunger of some primal chthonic god. The empires and nations of Europe sent their peasants, their artisans, their aristocrats, into the trenches and front lines of the Great War.

They also sent their artists. T. E. Lawrence, Robert Graves, Ivor Gurney, Erich Maria Remarque, J. R. R. Tolkien, Otto Dix, C. S. Lewis, A. A. Milne – they were all survived this mass madness that would shape their craft and thus modern culture.

Alain-Fournier, Author (KIA 22 September 1914, Age 27)

Such artistic worthies as Rupert Brooke, Alain-Fournier, Francis Ledwidge, Issac Rosenberg, and Antonio Sant'Elia also answered the call to arms. They would all died pathetically and horribly far from home, denying humanity the future fruits of their boundless creativity. And what can be said of the tragic loss of the ethereal and beautiful Wilfred Owen, arguably the finest poet of that tortured generation?

In September 1918, German leadership was forced to the inescapable conclusion that defeat was immediate. Attrition had bleed German manpower reservoir white. An increasingly tightening UK and US naval blockade had reduced the population to near starvation. Mutinous sailors wrestled for control of the German High Seas Fleet, rendering it incapable of challenging the allied fleets. Angry veterans attempted revolution behind the German lines and on the home-front. Innovative French and British verged on delivering that long-denied but now inevitable breakout into the German rear. Austria-Hungry, on whose behalf, Germany initially entered this disastrous conflict, had already suffered total defeat. And finally, ten-of-thousands healthy American dough-boys, fresh from the New World, joined the newly energized Western Allies in exploiting the German collapse.

The German Supreme Army Command surrendered its dictatorial powers over the German government, and left pro-Democracy opponents to negotiate a ceasefire, a tactic that would pay apocalyptic dividends a generation later. German and Allied representatives gathered in a train parked on a railway siding in the French Forest of Compiègne. There was no negotiations to speak of. After all, Germany had nothing with which to negotiate. At 5 a..m., the two sides agreed to a ceasefire to commence at 11 a.m. Paris time.

Isaac Rosenberg, Artist and Poet (KIA 1 April 1918, Age 27) (Self-portrait)

As word of the Armistice spread, millions of soldiers must have realized with relief that they would live to see home again.

English Poet Siegfried Sassoon might have survived the war, but he would never escape it.

Siegfried Sassoon confirms in few ways to the popular stereotype of a British Tommy of the Great War. His German name, the result of his mother's love of Wagnerian opera, was not the only thing to set him apart from his peers. He was born to wealth, his father Alfred being a scion of the fabulously successful Jewish Sassoon mercantile family, albeit one estranged for his marrying outside his Jewish faith. The devilishly handsome Siegfried also differed from the vast majority of his fellow soldiers in that he was homosexual.

Siegfried was all accounts, a superior soldier. As an officer, he was protective and careful with the lives of the men he led, often choosing to assume dangerous chores rather than delegate them to his subordinates. Siegfried's regard for his men's life made him popular among the troops, and surviving accounts speak to remarkable willingness for his men to trust his judgement. The citation detailing his being awarding the Military Cross in 1916 reads, "2nd Lt. Siegfried Lorraine Sassoon, 3rd (attd. 1st) Bn., R. W. Fus. For conspicuous gallantry during a raid on the enemy's trenches. He remained for 1£ hours under rifle and bomb fire collecting and bringing, in our wounded. Owing to his courage and determination all the killed and wounded were brought in."But to say Siegfried jealously guarded the lives of his soldiers is not to suggest he was in no way reckless with his own safely. Rather, his total lack of self-regard earned him the nickname "Mad Jack." Indeed, his fellow officer and friend, future classicist Robert Graves, described one example of Siegfried's heroically-suicidal battlefield conduct occurring during the First Battle of the Somme. Charging alone and hurling bombs as he ran, Siegfried killed or drove away over 50 enemy defenders, single-highhandedly capturing a German trench.

He went over with bombs in daylight, under covering fire from a couple of rifles, and scared away the occupants. A pointless feat, since instead of signalling for reinforcements, he sat down in the German trench and began reading a book of poems which he had brought with him. When he went back he did not even report. Colonel Stockwell, then in command, raged at him. The attack on Mametz Wood had been delayed for two hours because British patrols were still reported to be out. "British patrols" were Siegfried and his book of poems. "I'd have got you a D.S.O., if you'd only shown more sense," stormed Stockwell.

Francis Ledwidge, Poet (KIA 31 July 1917 , Age 29)

Still, Siegfried's remarkable talent for battle could not disguise his powerful hatred of the war. While recovering from wounds in 1917, he wrote a letter to his commanding officer proclaiming, “I believe that this war upon which I entered as a war of defence [sic] and liberation has now become a war of aggression and conquest. I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops and I can no longer be a party to prolonging those sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust.”

Siegfried's bold statement would be published in the Times of London and read aloud to the House of Commons. An angry military nearly court-marshaled the young officer, but his friend Robert Graves intervened, and Siegfried was instead referred to the Craiglockhart Hydropathic, a military hospital to be treated for weak nerves. It was there he would find a soulmate, the poor Wilfred Owen.

Siegfried would eventually return to France, but he would not remain long, being shot in the face by his own sergeant who had mistaken him for a German soldier. He had not yet recovered from this most recent wound when the Armistice came.

Wilfred Owen, Poet (KIA 4 November 1918 , Age 25)

Wilfred too would return to the fray. When Siegfried learned his friend had decided to return to duty, he threatened to knife Wilfred in the leg, thereby keeping him from the front. So Wilfred choose to depart without his friend's knowledge.

Exactly one week almost to the hour before the guns fell silent, the 25-year-old Wilford was killed while forcing of the Sambre-Oise Canal in northern France. His mother would receive the notice of his death Shropshire County on 11 November, even as church bells announced the Armistice.

"Anthem for Doomed Youth" (Wilfred Owen, 1917)

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

Only the monstrous anger of the guns. 

Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle 

Can patter out their hasty orisons. 

No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells; 

Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, 

The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells; 

And bugles calling for them from sad shires. 

What candles may be held to speed them all? 

Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes 

Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes. 

The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall; 

Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds, 

And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

The date of the Armistice immediately became known as an international holiday, honoring the war dead. Some know it as Remembrance Day, others as Veterans Day, but by any name, Armistice Day should be always a somber day. New Years Day is jubilant, the Fourth of July celebratory, but such festivities are out of place on Armistice Day.

Siegfried Sassoon , Poet (Survivor)

Siegfried Sassoon survived the war, but his closest friends, too many of the soldiers he led, even his own younger brother did not. For the remainder of his long life -- Siegfried would eventually succumb to to cancer in 1967, one week before his 81st birthday -- he could never forget the war dead. But he was ever possessed of a dreadful anger and overwhelming fear that the rest of us might. He would use his writings, poetry and fiction alike prose, exhorting readers to remember those who died in the war. But not to remember not their triumphs or their victories or their martial prowess. Rather, Siegfried wanted us to remember their suffering, their sacrifice, their pain, and above all, their deaths.

"Aftermath" (Siegfried Sassoon, 1919)

Have you forgotten yet?...

For the world's events have rumbled on since those gagged days

Like traffic checked while at the crossing of city-ways:

And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow

Like clouds in the lit heaven of life; and you're a man reprieved to go,

Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.

But the past is just the same--and War's a bloody game...

Have you forgotten yet?...

Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you'll never forget.

Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz--

The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?

Do you remember the rats; and the stench

Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench--

And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain?

Do you ever stop and ask, 'Is it all going to happen again?'

Do you remember that hour of din before the attack--

And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you then

As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men?

Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back

With dying eyes and lolling heads--those ashen-grey

Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?

Have you forgotten yet?...

Look up, and swear by the green of the spring that you'll never forget.