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You laughing, waving in your pinstripe double-breasted suit, me with my head in my hands
On the morning of November 11th I was called into the Colonel's room "to take some notes from the telephone." They were all there and got up and made room for me at the table. I think they must have thought that I knew shorthand which I didn't. A voice, very clear, thank God, said "Ready?" and began to dictate the Terms of the Armistice. They muttered a bit crowding round me and I said fiercely "Oh shut up I can't hear!" and the skies didn't fall.
I wrote in my own private short-long-hand and half my mind was in a prayer that I should be able to read it back. I could hear my heart thumping and hear the silence in the room around me. When the voice stopped I said mechanically "understood" and got up.
I made four copies of what I had written and took them in and went back to my little office staff and told them. I can't remember much what we said: I can only remember being so cold, and crying, and trying not to let the others see.
That night it was all over Paris. There were sounds of cheering and rejoicing down the Boulevards as I walked home. What I thought of was "Recessional." The Pension produced some champagne at dinner and we drank the loyal toast. And then across the table G. lifted her glass to me and said "Absent". I did not know her story nor she mine, but I drank to my friends who were dead and to my friends who, wounded, imprisoned, battered, shaken, exhausted, were alive in a new, and a terrible world.
—May Wedderburn Cannan, Grey Ghosts and Voices (1976)
I wrote in my own private short-long-hand and half my mind was in a prayer that I should be able to read it back. I could hear my heart thumping and hear the silence in the room around me. When the voice stopped I said mechanically "understood" and got up.
I made four copies of what I had written and took them in and went back to my little office staff and told them. I can't remember much what we said: I can only remember being so cold, and crying, and trying not to let the others see.
That night it was all over Paris. There were sounds of cheering and rejoicing down the Boulevards as I walked home. What I thought of was "Recessional." The Pension produced some champagne at dinner and we drank the loyal toast. And then across the table G. lifted her glass to me and said "Absent". I did not know her story nor she mine, but I drank to my friends who were dead and to my friends who, wounded, imprisoned, battered, shaken, exhausted, were alive in a new, and a terrible world.
—May Wedderburn Cannan, Grey Ghosts and Voices (1976)
no subject
You're welcome. I think memory matters.
There's a story about the image at the 0:53 mark that I’d wager you've never heard
I have never heard that story, and I have heard some weird stories out of both wars.