Amistice Day

Its Armistice Day and 11am went by without me even noticing (1st time) as my brain was involved in the job in hand. The fire alarm went off at 11 as well but it only registered as a test alarm.

When I was a kid the games I played with friends were all WW2 based as that conflict had only ended some 12 years previous. I could give a great simulation of a soldier being shot. WW1 had been over for 40 years and seemed lost in the mist of history, but incredibly WW2 finished 63 years ago.

I’ve watched many programs about WW1 and its causes and there’s no quick one liner (“WW2-that was just Hitler”). I even watched a programme that explained, quite plausibly, that the railways were to blame.

WW1 was about the arrogance of Europe’s ruling elite and its generals and their imperial machinations and was also the prime cause of WW2. History is a line of cause and effect not a series of pigeonholes to stick book titles into. This ones The Boar War, this WW1 and this WW2 etc.

War memorials are another of my pet hates with their Roman Columns, Angels and pious words. The Glorious Dead. Nope. It’s life that’s glorious not dying violently. I’ve seen one memorial somewhere that claims WW1 was to preserve ‘the Sanctity of Treaties’. I wonder which lying politician thought that one up?

There ought to be a ‘Treaty to Preserve the Sanctity of Life’. And another that states ‘War is a Crime’. I’m not against having ceremonies and monuments but please, where is there a national Anti Fascist Monument?
Dream on crazy fitter.