I posted this last year but as the point of Remembrance Day is not only about remembering the sacrifices made but also the reason such wars should never be repeated, I thought it was worth a rerun:
At 11am on Remembrance Day many of us paused for a minute to remember those whose lives were lost in war. While I consider this a noble and worthy gesture I think it important that we also remember the reasons these people died, especially when many of those deaths were unnecessary and avoidable.
It is worth knowing that although the Armistice ending the First World War came into effect at 11am on the 11th of November, it was actually signed at 5am that day. The decision to continue fighting for a further 6 hours resulted in an additional 10,944 casualties including 2,738 deaths. The last recorded death occurred at 10:59am.
I cannot think of a more poignant example of the waste of human life that is so often the case in war than the fact that 2,738 people died solely for the purpose of commemorating the Armistice at 11am.
Lest we forget.