I was sitting in a room with a whole crowd of other ‘older’ people when suddenly, the loudest clap of thunder I’ve ever heard erupted directly above us all. It sounded like an explosion and given we were in a room where discussion of The Great War was going on, it carried with it a bit of historic foreboding.
The room gave a gasp then a strained laugh at what turned out to be harmless. We returned to our war learning. And, today I discovered that Armistice Day did not signal the end of the First World War.
The Armistice was, actually, a ceasefire between Germany, Britain and France. The end of the First World War wasn’t until June 1919 with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. And peace wasn’t finally, officially ratified until January 1920.
In fact, the British government didn’t want too much celebrating on November 11, 1918 for a number of reasons, one of which was the continuing spread of the incorrectly called Spanish Flu.
(I know I’ve written about this before but I think it bears repetition: it wasn’t ‘Spanish’ but was called Spanish because the Spanish newspapers were the only ones permitted to discuss the influenza pandemic while the British, German, French and American media were censored during the war. This meant that everyone figured it had originated and was worse in Spain. In fact, the latest evidence suggests that it started with Allied soldiers in a trench.)
But, back to the Armistice of November 11, 1918…This was between the Allies and Germany. There had already been three other Armistices leading up to November 11. These were between the Allies and Bulgaria, then the Ottoman Empire and, finally the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This effectively took them out of the war leaving Germany to be dealt with alone.
The war, however, continued in various other places with British and Commonwealth military personnel having to travel to Russia and the North West Frontier (India) long after the signing of the Armistice.
All of this was illuminated by Roland Wales, an author who was talking at an event I attended today at the Surrey History Centre. His new book is called Armistice and After and discusses post-WW1 Britain and the effects it had on society. It was an excellent talk by a very erudite writer.
It was the final session of an interesting day which included some silent black and white WW1 footage of Red Cross nurses (no actual fighting but some highly entertaining three-legged racing), a soundscape created in an attempt to artistically represent the war through sound and a presentation by a metal detector of a rare medal from 1914.
The footage was interesting and, thankfully, short, the soundscape was a bit wanky and the medal presentation was great…so I’ll go straight to that.
The medal was received by the High Sheriff of Surrey, Mr Jim Glover and a more entertaining man you’ll rarely meet. He took the medal on behalf of the Queen and then handed it on to the Surrey Archivist for safe keeping and, eventual display.
He then went on to explain what the High Sheriff was and why. He was very funny and it was most enlightening. It’s not a paid position, it’s held for a year and there’s no expenses claimed. He represents the monarch at official engagements and there’s a High Sheriff in every county. In fact, when I told Mirinda about Mr Glover, she told me that their academic board has a High Sheriff on it.
The ‘Medal Circus’ mentioned in the photo follows a conversation that took place behind me when the group was being photographed. Two old people were complaining that there was a circus going on and it was wasting everyone’s time. I thought their comments were unnecessarily rude and negative.
While talking about rudeness, I feel I have to mention the two old ladies sitting behind me, on the other side, who talked almost continuously throughout the whole event. Rude and inconsiderate.
Still, the whole afternoon was great and I enjoyed myself. I also tried a bit of that WW1 favourite: trench cake. This was a fruit cake that didn’t use eggs and was made specifically to be sent to the troops in the trenches at Christmas. The trench cake I tried was not 100 years old. One of the ladies had made some and brought it along. While not very moist, it was, nevertheless, quite tasty.
The rain, heralded by the thunder, poured down, letting up by the time I left. I did manage to get a bit damp but the true downpour did not start until I was safely back in the house.
