The Guns Fall Silent: Armistice Day
1918 · event
At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the First World War ended. After four years and over sixteen million lives, the guns fell silent. To this day, the world stops for a minute of silence to remember them.
The armistice was signed at 5:10 in the morning in a railway carriage in the forest of Compiègne, but it took effect only at 11:00. In those five and a half hours, nearly 2,700 more men fell. The last, an American named Henry Gunther, was killed at 10:59.
Every November, the poppies return, inspired by the fields of Flanders, where the flowers grew over the graves. One minute of silence, a century later, for sixteen million people who never heard the bells.