I recently watched the remake of All Quiet on the Western Front, which served as a timely reminder that war is insane.
That’s not to say military action should never be ruled out as a geopolitical option. With all due respect to the pacifists in the room, I believe sometimes it is necessary to stand up for yourself in the face of brute force.
I know there are people who argued, and perhaps still do, that the world should not have gone to war against Nazi Germany 80 years ago, but I’m not one of them.
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I also can’t see how one could in all good conscience try to persuade Ukrainians to not resist the Russian aggressor in an invasion that has now reached the nine-month mark.
But nevertheless, as necessary as it might sometimes be, war is still insane.
Anyone who doubts that should watch All Quiet on the Western Front.
The movie, set in the trenches of the First World War, is an unflinching depiction of war at its worst and a reminder of why it should be avoided if at all possible.
However, it also reminded me about a particularly odious part of that war that many people probably don’t know much about.
The armistice between Germany and its enemies was signed at 5 a.m. on Nov. 11, 1918, but the war was not to officially end until 11 a.m.
Historians say that 10,900 soldiers were killed, wounded or declared missing during those ensuing six hours. One count says 2,738 soldiers were killed on the Western Front alone on the final day of the war, most of them dying between the time the peace agreement was signed and when it went into effect.
I first heard about this insanity while working as a reporter at the daily newspaper in Moose Jaw in the 1980s. I was assigned to interview and photograph a First World War veteran for the paper’s Remembrance Day edition, and we became friends. He told me about 25-year-old Canadian private George Lawrence Price, who was killed by a German sniper with two minutes left before the fighting ended.
I’m afraid that story didn’t make much of an impression on my 24-year-old self, but it sure does now.
War is insane.
