Remembrance Day and First World War

Remembrance day in many parts of the world is observed annually on 11the November to mark the end of hostilities at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918. The First World War (28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918) is one of the deadliest conflicts in history, it is estimated that it resulted in the death of over nine million combatants and seven million civilians.

Amongst the war poets who served in the First World War was Siegfried Loraine Sassoon CBE MC (8 September 1886 – 1 September 1967). He was decorated for bravery on the Western Front. As well as describing the horrors of his and others experiences he derided those he thought responsible for a jingoism-fuelled war. One of the Siegfried Sassoon's many poems was Suicide in the Trenches: 

Suicide in the Trenches

I knew a simple soldier boy

Who grinned at life in empty joy,

Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,

And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,

With crumps and lice and lack of rum,

He put a bullet through his brain.

No one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye

Who cheer when soldier lads march by,

Sneak home and pray you'll never know

The hell where youth and laughter go.

Many of those who fought in and survived the First World War rarely spoke of the hardship they had endured or the horror they had witnessed. The experience of gruelling trench warfare and the cruel reality of the terrible slaughter that took place scarred them for life. Some of the last survivors of the awful conflict spent their final years warning future generations against war. Henry John Patch (17 June 1898 – 25 July 2009), was briefly the oldest man in Europe and the last surviving combat soldier of the First World War from any country. He was a tireless campaigner for peace and described the first world war as 'legalised mass murder'.

Image: Siegfried Sassoon by George Charles Beresford (1915)