Today is, where I live, at least, 11/11 and at 11 am we will pause to consider what happened so long ago and in all wars.

We would definitely like the guns to fall silent and wars to stop, too many have been lost and we reap the result in dislocation, disease, truma for very little benefit.

Your nation calls it Remembrance Day .We used to call it Armistice Day . Now we honor our veterans and generally forget why November 11 is sacred . If I have one criticism of the cease fire being 11-11 at 11 O clock is that it became the perfect example of the folly of announcing a date specific end of conflict.

The German negotiators had arrived at the cease fire talks on Nov 8 ,and proposed an immediate cease fire while they hammered out the details. French Marshal Ferdinand Foch, head negotiator for the Allies, refused, so the war continued for the next three days resulting in more than 21,600 casualties.

On the morning of November 11 people began celebrating the end of the war . But in fact there were still 6 more hours of brutal deadly fighting left to do . The armies of both sides ,mostly the allies , took full advantage to throw their troops into completely needless slaughter . That quest for numerical symmetry cost thousands of lives.

Historian Joseph Persico has studied the last day of WWI . He found that more than 10,000 were killed, wounded, or missing on both sides during those last six hours. That’s more than the total casualties for both sides during D-Day .One idiot commander ,Gen. William M. Wright, commander of the 89th Division, ordered his troops to take the French village of Stenay from the Germans because the city had bathing facilities, and he wanted to capture them for his unit to enjoy. It cost his division 300 casualties. The 26th Division fought from 9:30 a.m. until the ceasefire at 11 a.m. and suffered 120 casualties.Pvt. Henry Gunther of the 79th Division charged a German machine gun emplacement and was shot through the head and killed at 10:59 a.m. ... one minute before the armistice took effect. He was the last American killed in action .

A year later on November 5, 1919, General John J. Pershing, commander of the AEF, found himself testifying before Congress on the last days of the war. Pershing said :

"When the subject of the armistice was under discussion we did not know what the purpose of it was definitely, whether it was something proposed by the German High Command to gain time or whether they were sincere in their desire to have an armistice; and the mere discussion of an armistice would not be sufficient grounds for any judicious commander to relax his military activities….No one could possibly know when the armistice was to be signed, or what hour be fixed for the cessation of hostilities so that the only thing for us to do, and which I did as commander in chief of the American forces, and which Marshal Foch did as commander in chief of the Allied armies was to continue the military activities" .

Yes much foolishness, my grandfather was killed at Ypres leaving a family with much angst about it. It seems the British, French and American generals were mad or incompetent