One Century Later
11 Nov 2018Today marks the 100th year anniversary of Armistice Day and the end of the Great War. And with it, comes a lot of reflections and thoughts.
There are abundant articles written by much better writers than myself detailing the war itself and what Armistice meant in the moment back in 1918. Instead, I write this piece in an attempt to piece together what this particular anniversary means to me personally.
My interest in history began when I was around 10 when I became enamored with the wonderful world of Star Wars. I would spend hours reading and contributing to the online community of Wookipedia, geekishly taking pride in all the odd details and specifics I could memorize and recite. On a family car ride to Toronto, I was enthusiastically explaining to my older brother how the political tensions of various galactical systems resulted in the First Battle of Kashyyyk (fictional Star Wars planet) and the long term implications it had on the rest of the galaxy when my brother grew tired and asked: “if you’re this interested in fictional events, why don’t you just learn real life history?”
Thus began a keen dive into the history of our world. Ancient history never really stuck with me so I drifted towards more modern events and naturally, the World Wars. Large expansive galactic battles pulled me into Star Wars so it made sense that arguably the largest and most extensive conflicts in human history would peak my interest.
The more I learned about the First World War, the more it fascinated me.
WW1 was the first “total war”, which loosely means that the war effort was prioritized above all else. I truly cannot empathize with what it would have felt like to have every aspect of life be focused around the war. War still exists today but for us in Canada, it does not touch the everyday citizen like it did in WW1 (and even more so WW2). Rations, propaganda, news, workforce, schooling, entertainment - the war was seen everywhere.
Then there’s also the societal impacts WW1 left. The technological advancements that it motivated (planes were essentially gliders at the start of WW1 but by the end, there were full blown fighter planes!), the redefining of infantry battles (machine guns and tanks), the list goes on. Simply put, the world was a deeply different place after the war. The “lost generation” is among my favourite examples of societal impacts left by the war. To paraphrase from a book jacket from The Sun Also Rises, an entire generation grew up trying to find direction right at the time that the world lost its own way. This odd time to be a young adult no doubt is related to the absolutely fine music and literature that was produced in this time period (Prokofiev, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Tolkien, Gershwin, etc). The Treaty of Versailles is another noteworthy impact left by the Great War. It is widely agreed upon that it was one of the primary causes for WW2 and thus played a sizeable role in shaping our modern world.
It should go without saying at this point that the first World War had a tremendous impact in the creating the world we live in today.
And then there’s the human side to this conflict. The bone chilling imagery of inhumane living conditions in the trenches, the absolute terror brought with the sound of the whistle signalling to go over the top, and senseless battles directed by out of touch superiors resulting in the deaths of far too many young men. The horror of the first World War is one that is tough to describe with words. As a 19 year old male myself, I question what it must have been like to be standing in the trench, paralyzed with fear waiting for my turn to go over the top. Fully knowing that in all likelihood if not instantly cut open with whizzing machine gun and sniper bullets, I would have my insides rattled and ripped apart by neverending artillery fire. I cannot imagine what it must have felt like having the knowledge that even if by the slimmest odds, I made it across, it would have been all to just move a few metres forward. All for a cause that my nation has no direct stake in. I simply just cannot imagine.
That brings us to today. What particular significance does the century anniversary bring, if any?
A popular answer may be just that “100 is a nice looking number” or that “it just feels like an important one”.
To me, 100 years ago is another world that runs parallel to ours. When July 1st 2016 rolled around, July 1st 1916 also happened and over 50,000 British men died again. To some, this may seem really bizarre but I think I’m not alone in taking particular note of century anniversaries. It’s a way for things to be relived and refelt. That being said, I cannot come up with a good reason why I feel this way about 100 years and not 99 or 98. But it is what I have chosen and I cannot help myself from feeling the impacts of events that happened exactly one century ago.
If you still don’t quite get what I mean, I’ll try to describe it this way. You know how you might have once had a really big day. It might have been your first date, or that big championship win, or the day you got your dream job. Whatever it is, you know that feeling maybe exactly 24 hours later, or a week later, or a month later that you think back and say: “wow, that happened precisely x hours/days/weeks/months ago”. There is no grounded sense of significance to it but you can’t help but feel and recogonize this constructed anniversary. That’s exactly how I feel about one century ago. The events of 100 years ago exist to me as a modern presence.
And that’s why this particular Remembrance Day is a special one to me (and I’m sure many others). It marks the departure of The Great War as something that has continued to exist into something that has happened. I know it’s silly because it’s some barrier that I have constructed for myself but it is what it is. To me, the First World War slips into the likes of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, no doubt fascinating events but they are less felt today. At some point, it will feel odd to call the First World War part of “modern history” and that scares me.
It scares me not because I’m afraid I’ll forget about it because knowledge can always be rediscovered.
It scares me because it’s a reminder that something like WW1 which I have grown up always viewing as a relatively modern event will eventually fade into the pages of our evergrowing human history as “the past”.