11.11.2018

Tomorrow is the centenary of the end of World War One. The Armistice came into force at 11 o'clock on the 11th November, 1918, ending four years of the worst wartime slaughter in human history. It's hard to find a good reason why war broke out and then continued unabated for four years. I am not talking about the well-documented causes of the conflict, but what its purpose was. It seemed to be in the interests of no one power to fight such a devastating war for so long, though few could have predicted the bizarre static nature of battle. Jaunty predictions of it 'being over by Christmas' (meaning Xmas 1914) proved to be so far wide of the mark as to be laughable, if not the for the unfolding tragedy.

In my teens I often read stories from both of the major 20th Century conflicts. One that I vividly remember was about the last shot fired in WW1, allegedly just after 11am on the 11th November. Of course, documenting such a shot would be difficult on a front of hundreds of kilometres and, in fact, over a number of battle fronts in different countries. There must have been lots of last shots, some perhaps friendly in nature, others not. In the case of the story I read, set on the Western Front in France, the shot was fatal, killing a British soldier, seconds after the laying down of arms.

This poem emerged from my recollection of that story and is devoted to all who fell in that awful conflict.

The Final Shot

The last shot made
that broke the air
that sounded out
a lone fanfare
for fallen Man.
That pierced the wire
flew clear the mud
that found its way
into the blood.
A splinter past
the inked-in time
a second after,
guns were laid
in metal line on line
and shattered faces cheered.

Final iron flew
unbidden into flesh.
Who shall be last
be first,
instead, an unripe
armistice.


Finally, a photo from the Australian War Memorial showing Australian soldiers on the duckboards at Passchendaele. 38,000 of their countrymen died in this bloody, pointless battle between August and November 1917. For them, no armistice, nor even a burial in their homeland. Lest We Forget.