Yesterday as I was leaving for the Armistice Day celebration in town, I slipped on the icy outside steps leading from my apartment and fell on my back. I should have been paying closer attention to where I stepped. I got up fairly easily, but as the day dragged on, I became sorer and sorer. I’m fine; there was no major damage that I know of, but I’m still quite sore. I will probably wake up this morning even more sore, but the good thing is that I have the day off and can recuperate.
The Great War was over. One hundred years ago — just before 3 a.m. on Nov. 11, 1918 — The New York Times received the first bulletin of the Armistice, which had been signed aboard a rail car in a small village in Northern France. A searchlight on the tower of the Times building, previously used to announce election results, gleamed rays across the city until daylight broke.
After more than four years of fighting, 8.5 million soldiers had been killed, including more than 100,000 Americans, and 7 million civilians were dead. In that time, modern warfare was born, and the trenches of Western Europebecame a charnel house.
As news spread of the war’s end, people gathered in parks, streets and town squares, overwhelmed with jubilation on what is now officially celebrated as Armistice Day.
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Joe
The Closet Professor 