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[choco_frosh]

It's Armistice Day.

Let's all stop BS'ing ourselves, that's what it is. We may now use it to celebrate veterans, or all the war dead of the 20th century; but there's a reason why it's today, out of all possible days; and that's because it was 96 years (and six hours) ago that the guns stopped firing.

And in Britain, everything still stops, at eleven o'clock, in the midst of an ordinary day, to remember...well, in some ways I think cracked.com actually got it right: the point where Europe lost its World War virginity.*
As I've said before, I think this would be a much better way of observing September 11, as well.

September 11! Wow, yeah, twelve years (yikes) and two months ago we were on break half-way through my first paleography class,** and I overheard a couple of my classmates discussing what I thought had to be some really stupid action movie...
And then afterwards I wandered back to CMS in a bit of a daze, and watched the towers on fire for a couple of minutes. And then I sort of shook myself, and headed off to the library, because, well, in my mental world terrorism was something that happened and for whatever reason,*** it didn't make so much difference to me whether it was happening in Baghdad or New York. And meantime, I had a library shift to get to.

Wow, we're really off-track, aren't we...

Uh...anyway. So 96 years ago, the soldiers started to be demobbed. WW1 was what had made them the génération perdue. What makes ours another lost generation (assuming, again, that that's even a useful term) is, I think, a bit more complex.

But we won't talk about that today.
Today is also St. Martin's Day. The feast of a military saint...is probably another reason they chose this to sign the armistice, in addition to the fact that it was 11:11 11/11. (Well, and the fact that the midden had just thoroughly hit the windmill in Berlin.)

Anyway. I was originally going to try to track down an early-medieval picture of the saint and the beggar. But I couldn't actually FIND any online. (Heck, possibly there AREN'T any?)

So instead, here's a painting of Martin quitting the army.
In some ways, much more appropriate.


* Churchill, among others, argued that the REAL date for that should be 1756, with the outbreak of war in Germany, all the rest of Europe, India, North America, and ALL THE OCEANS. My US history textbook made a case for pushing it all the way back to the War of the League of Augsburg. But WW1 did have a similar effect of ... shock, howdidthishappen, whydidwethinkthiswasagoodidea, disillusionment. For a hundred years previously, Europe's wars mostly taken place far enough away to ignore (in Africa, say.) Many people seemed to have assumed, unconsciously, that they just didn't HAPPEN any more.

Kinda like the World Trade Center attacks, come to think of it. Similar perception that "this just didn't happen here". Perhaps living in Britain accounts for why my reaction to 9/11 was less incredulous shock and fear, and more a combination of "Oh fuck, not again" and a sort of détournement at the innate ridiculousness of the attack.

** So the day would've been pretty memorable, anyway.

*** Quasi-Asperger's (a topic we will return to later)? Internationalism? Being a historian, and knowing that on the "insane terrorist-type violence" charts this was basically nothing compared to, say, Béziers?

Comments

[choco_frosh]

OK: Happy Fact time! 25 years ago, they were partying on top of the Berlin War. Today, a hermit thrush returns to North Carolina and demands mealworms.

[schreibergasse.livejournal.com]

OK: Happy Fact time! 25 years ago, they were partying on top of the Berlin War; today, a hermit thrush returns to North Carolina and demands mealworms.