The Armistice
This is a note to a friend, in California, and who served in the United States Air Force. The extraordinary thing, here, is that in 2014 it never crossed my mind that I would one day be contacted by the media informing me that a 1943 crash site had been located and which led, in August 2018, to the consecration of a Memorial by invitation of the German People, and that three other factors would come from that:
I would meet Frau Hedi Kraus and her Family, Herr Peter Watta and be in communciation with his father and mother, and that the Memorial wuld be regarded as a resting place also for a german Friend’s own grandfather killed in the First World War and who has no known grave.
Nor did I have in 2014 any incline of the painstaking work and research by herr Erik Wieman and Archaeological Team IG Heimat Forschung. I am, forever, in their debt.
Kenneth Thomas Webb
Good evening Jack...
Ah yes! The Armistice!
What a beautiful message
to find on my time line.
Yes.
We stand together,
comrades in arms
and as a band of brothers,
past and present alike,
an affection, a bonding.
The Reveille sounds.
That call in the morning
at the daylight hour,
A great swirl and wind
as the Colours
lying the ground
in salute of those fallen,
Whirl up and catch the Spirit,
at full mast again
and full blown before the Wind.
Lest we Forget,
We will indeed Remember Them.
As I reflect upon the sombre events of this day,
Never, in all my years, have I felt - as I do today –
a bonding with all those against whom we fought,
the realisation that in every war
it is the innocent who are caught up
in the frenzy of politics,
of ideologies,
of disputes.
A simplistic view I know,
but everyone, either side,
has a grieving mother, father,
sister, brother,
wife, husband,
son, daughter,
grandchildren,
nephews and nieces,
All of whom must
for decades on,
carry the burden of that awful word...
WHY?
Thank you Jack for your service too
and that of your family and friends...
Let us now step forward
with a spring in our step,
Our backs braced and a smile,
as all of the Fallen
in all wars
past and present,
rightly behove us
so to do.
Kenneth Thomas Webb
Liverpool
December 31, 2021
All Rights Reserved
United Kingdom - Austria - Germany - Australia - New Zealand - Canada - USA
© Kenneth Thomas Webb 2022
One of the Fifteen Founding Members of Leaders Lodge
Composed November 11, 2014
Republished February 26, 2020
At the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the year 1918, The Armistice took effect and at last the guns fell silent and the Great War came to an end – alas, the harbinger for an even greater world war just twenty one years later, in time to capture a second generation of flowering youth to the slaughter.
Closing remarks by Flt Lt Kenneth Webb and Presentation by Herr Ober Bergermeister (Lord Mayor) to Herr Wieman and IGHF Saturday August 4, 2018 Lachen Speyerdorf
