KS3 / KS4 / GCSE History: 1918 - The end of WW1 and Remembrance Day

After four terrible years the most devastating war in history came to an end on November the 11th 1918.

In London expectant crowds gathered in Parliament Square and waited for the sound that would prove the War was finally over.

Big Ben had been silenced at the outbreak of war, now at the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month it was about to strike again.

It was the signal for a roar of relief and joy and the start of celebrations which lasted three days.

In The House of Commons the Prime Minister, Lloyd George, addressed the House, “I hope we may say”, he concluded “that thus this fateful morning came an end to all wars.”

In Trafalgar Square revellers climbed on the lions and seized buses.

Australians and Canadians led the way, they tore down the advertising hoardings in Trafalgar Square asking people to buy war bonds and they lit an enormous bonfire right here under Nelson’s Column. The stones were left cracked and blackened as a consequence and you can see the damage still here today, the last physical reminder of that amazing day.

Soldiers recovering in a country hospital were told the news, there the reaction was rather different, one of the men said the announcement was met with silence.

“Our world was gone”, he said “a bloody world, a world of suffering, but also a world of laughter, excitement and comradeship beyond description. Now we were just some of the wreckage left behind.”

Even before the War ended cities, towns and villages all across Britain had begun to build memorials to the dead. Over 5,000 went up in the two years following the Armistice. Some, a few, celebrated victory. Most spoke of sacrifice, men remembering their dead comrades, the ordinary soldier rather than the Commander.

In the village of Bryant’s Puddle, Dorset, the War Memorial was unveiled on November the 12th 1918, the day after the War ended.
At the dedication of this Memorial the Bishop of Salisbury wondered whether there was really any need for further reminders of the War and he answered his own question, “Yes, because there would be future generations who would lead lives crowded with happenings and they needed to be warned lest they forget, lest they forget."

Later generations would contend it had been a futile war. The War was terrible certainly, but hardly futile. It stopped the German conquest of much of Europe and perhaps even of villages like this.

Never before in the nation’s history had a war required the commitment and the sacrifice of the whole population and by and large for four years the British people kept faith with it. It wasn’t a war they had sought and had they known how it would turn out they doubtless wouldn’t have joined in.

But they hadn’t known, they couldn’t have known anymore than the politicians or the Generals could have known and once it had started there was no way of stopping it anymore than you could suddenly make the dead start to walk again.

A century on we should perhaps remember and respect that sacrifice and realise that more than any other event this was the one that made modern Britain.