11 November 2003

Dining Car Number 2419D

The White House this morning indicates that major combat has not resumed in Iraq, whatever else you might hear, and the President will go to Arlington today for the traditional wreath-laying. I am thinking about all vets everywhere today. There is much to consider and sacrifices which must be made. I think back to where the Veteran's holiday, the day once known as Armistice Day, began.

I'm glad I didn't have some eager-beaver platoon sergeant to roust me out for dawn patrol on this day eighty-five years ago. I don't know what they knew down on the front lines but they didn't know enough. The U.S. Army's 111th Infantry did not know what had happened in a clearing in the forest of near the little village of Rethondes, and they went on patrol that morning. The Division was from Pennsylvania, though the soldiers were drawn from the southwest part of the state, and from West Virginia and the valley towns of Ohio where my Grandfather joined up.

What they didn't know was that the Kaiser was gone, abdicated, and Marshal of France Foch had been meeting with the German General Staff on the terms of surrender. The two sides met on a rail spur along the Oise River, between Soissons and Beauvais. Compiegne had been famed for its 18th-century royal chateau, built by Louis XV, and the site of Napoleon's Farewell to his officers prior to his first exile. It was soon to be famous for something else. Late on the night of 10 November, a document was signed in Dining Car Number 2419D of the Express Europeens. The Germans gave up. Hostilities would cease at 11:00am, on the 11th day of the 11th month.

I have an old book, published in the 1930s with some poignant pictures of the Great War. It is pacificst in tone, and the pictures are hyper-real, trying to warn agains the rising tide of re-armament. The most moving image, for me, is one that was taken 85 years ago this morning. It is a row of 22 crosses with the saucer-shaped Doughboy helmets slung from the middle of the cross. They were Americans, all killed that morning, the last morning the guns fired in the Great War.

The history of the 11th Infantry lists a Sgt. Ralph H. Waugaman from Pennsylvania as having his hand shot off at quarter to eleven on Nov. 11, 1918. He was wounded twice. His brother Roscoe was wounded once.

When the German government offered an armistice to end the hostilities of WWI, one of the conditions of Allied acceptance was that the majority of the High Seas Fleet be interned in an Allied port, hostage to good behavior. To ensure that there was no mischief, the Admiralty determined this port should be Scapa Flow, a bleak and windswept island encircled by the Orkneys northwest of Scotland. The island's useful feature is an open sheltered lagoon, and for years it was the Fleet Anchorage of the Royal Navy.

To satisfy the terms of the Armistice, on 21 November, 1918, seventy four German warships were met by The Combined Fleet of over two hundred and fifty allied ships was assembled to escort them into captivity in the lagoon. There the ships sat at anchor, since the Armistice did not settle the matter of the Great War, it only provided for a cease-fire pending a final Treaty. The ships were bleak prisons for the Germans sailors and their officers. They had little food and not enough coal to fend off the Orkney chill, much less get up steam in their boilers.

There was no communication with the outside world, and the months dragged on without resolution. By June of 1919 preparations were underway for the triumphant parade to be led by General Pershing in New York City. Survivors of the 111th Division would march down Fifth Avenue with the rest of the American Expeditionary Force. In Paris, the peace negotiations were at a delicate stage.

The German fleet Commander, Rear Admiral Reuter, became convinced that the Fleet might be used against his prostrate Fatherland. He secretly issued an order to the skeleton crews still onboard the German ships to scuttle them so that they might never be used against his people. On 21 June 1919, on his command, the sea-cocks were opened and the chill waters of the North Sea began to flood into the steel hearts of the High Seas Fleet. Some ships raised the forbidden flag of the German Empire. By the time the British realized what was happening, they were only able to tow six of the ships onto the beach. More than fifty units of the High Seas Fleet went to the bottom, a remarkable achievement of collective naval suicide.

They say that German sailors in the water were picked up with 'minimum courtesy' by the British, and eight Germans drowned. They are interred in the naval cemetery at Lyness, the last casualties of the Great War.

The first anniversary came around, presently. There was starvation in Germany and the Spanish Flu was abroad around the world, killing hundreds of thousands. In France, it was decided that November 11th would be a national festival, it then became a bank holiday. Every year, town representatives and war veterans laid huge wreaths on our war memorials, and as here, the President of France lays a spray of flowers on the tomb of the unknown soldier, interred under the lofty arches of the Arc de Triomphe.

The railcar was preserved exactly where it had stood when the Germans signed, and formally dedicated in 1927. It was located in the middle of a 100-meter circular clearing. It was a site of reverence for the loss of so many Frenchmen and so much misery. The inscription on a plaque reads "ICI, LE 11 NOVEMBRE 1918, SUCCOMBA LE CRIMINEL ORGUEIL DE L'EMPIRE ALLEMAND VAINCU PAR LES PEUPLES LIBRES QU'IL PRETENDAIT ASSERVIR."

My French is not very good, and I won't bother to try to translate. I think you get the flavor of it. People remember these things, until they forget, and for one veteran the memory did not fade for a moment.

When the French surrendered to the Germans, 22 years later, on June 22, 1940, Adolf Hitler insisted that the instrument of surrender e executed in that very rail car, on that very spot. Today there is an impressive marble slab where the Armistice was signed, and the French have recreated the dining car. There is a museum in the wood now to shelter it from the elements. But there is a note on the replica of Dining Car Number 2419D that reads: "l'original ayant été emmené près de Berlin et détruit par les Allemands en Avril, 1945."

I guess les Allemands didn't want the railcar used again.

God bless the Vets.