France Remembers World War I

November 11, Armistice Day, is a national holiday in France.  All schools, businesses, and government agencies are closed.  (Bien sûr, you can get your baguette from the baker, your blood sausage from the butcher, and your beets from the green grocer, if you do your shopping before noon.)

Le Jour de l'Armistice commemorates the end of World War I in 1918 when, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, all guns fell silent.

According to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, this war claimed the lives of 1,186,800 French soldiers, including those of 71,00 French colonial combatants. 

Eleven percent of the French population was either killed or wounded in the "war to end all wars".

To understand just how profoundly France was affected by "The Great War," you need only wind your way through the picturesque countryside, and drive through the heart of any small town.  Inevitably, you will spot a monument on whose marble façade is engraved the names of the young residents who "gave their lives to the nation".

Ninety years later, farmer's are still finding bullets, bombs, and bones in the soil where wheat and beets grow,  in the fields where cows graze.

The great tragedy of human history is that we seem incapable of ridding our selves of A Terrible Love of War.

Where are the peace memorials?

Yves FOHLEN - Guide conférencier - Caverne du Dragon
envoyé par espritdepicardie

Yves Fohlen, historien français, à la Caverne du Dragon parle du Chemin des Dames, barrière de crètes à 150 km au Nord-est de Paris ou se déroulèrent des combats lors de la guerre 1914-1918.