WORLD 11 Nov 2008 "War to end all Wars" armistice signed 90 years ago

At the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the guns of the Western Front of World War I fell silent after more than four years of continuous warfare. Germany had signed an Armistice. In Allied countries, the day is marked with wreath layings at national WWI memorials and at the gravesites near epic battles. An exception is Russia. And in the last decade or so, there's been a headcount each Nov 11 of the dwindling number of WWI veterans still living. As of mid July, there are five.

The only American is Frank Buckles, 107, of West Virginia. Italian veteran Francesco Domenico Chiarello died at 109 on 1 Jul 2008. The events in France commemorating the 80th anniversary, attended by the leaders of WWI allied countries, was seen as the last large-scale event with WWI veterans in attendance. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder declined the invitation to attend.

The United States intervened in European affairs for the first time in WWI, and more than 100,000 American troops were killed. In that country Armistice Day is commemorated as Veterans Day on the weekday closest to Nov 11 each year.

All previous wars were eclipsed by the scale of destruction from this struggle between Europe's great powers. They were grouped into two hostile alliances: the central powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey); and the allied powers (Britain and Empire, France, Belgium, Russia, Italy and the United States), totalled over 65 million. And over three million troops came from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India.

Russia doesn't observe Armistice Day because for that country the war ended in Mar 1918 with the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. According to BBC sources, changes that rocked Russia, culminating in the Bolshevik Revolution of Nov 1917 and the subsequent four-year civil war, meant that Europe's "Great War" was little more than a sideshow in Russia.

Before WWI officially ended on 28 Jun 1919, with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, an estimated 10 million men lost their lives on the battlefield, another 20 million were wounded, and there were some 10 million civilian deaths. The heaviest loss of life for a single day occurred on 1 Jul 1916 during the Battle of the Somme, when the British Army suffered 57,470 casualties.

The 90th anniversary promises to be a target date for operators of tours to WWI battlfields and gravesites, and well as for new films, documentaries, books and articles about the war. Paul Gross' First World War epic "Passchendaele" will open the Toronto International Film Festival in Sep 2008. It's the story of the brutal third battle of Ypres in WWI.

The 90th is also likely to see classics about the war rescreened and reprinted. One classic is "Gallipoli," a 1981 Peter Weir film starring the young Mel Gibson about a mismanaged British-French military engagement against the Turks at Gallipoli peninsula in 1915. Both sides took heavy casualties. It was the first major battle fought by the joint military formation, the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC). Another is "All Quiet on the Western Front," an anti-war story written by a German veteran in 1929 that was turned into an Oscar-winning film the following year. Jul/08

RELATED READING:

BBC special WWI report

First World War history

Italian WWI veteran dead at 109 (ABC/AFP 1 Jul 2008)