Peace at Last by Guy Cuthbertson

Author:Guy Cuthbertson [Cuthbertson, Guy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, World War I, World, Modern, 20th Century, Social History
ISBN: 9780300233384
Google: n5NyDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: YaleUP
Published: 2018-01-01T20:33:08+00:00

5

ARMISTICE NIGHT

Armistice Night! That night would be remembered down unnumbered generations. Whilst one lived that had seen it the question would be asked: What did you do on Armistice Night?

Ford Madox Ford, A Man Could Stand Up—, 19261

SUNSET IN LONDON and Paris came at a quarter past four, and in Brussels at four o’clock, as the waxing moon was reaching its first quarter, creating a perfect half-moon.2 Under the same moon, in different towns and cities, the atmosphere continued to build as the light waned, as crowds became larger and more excited, and thus, as twilight became night about two hours after sunset, the magical ‘Armistice Night’ arrived. In Oxford, the terms of armistice were read out at Carfax, the crossroads at the city centre, at 6 p.m., as the last light was going, as if to announce the start of Armistice Night. It would be a rainy night to the south of Britain, where Londoners danced in the drizzle, a spell of fine rain ‘thinned the streets’ in Banbury for a while in the late afternoon,3 and rain collected in Laurie Lee’s shoes as he watched the celebrations in Gloucestershire. In Gloucester, Ivor Gurney wrote in ‘The Day of Victory’ of how ‘Night came, starless, to blur all things over / That strange assort of Life’, and

Rain fell, miserably, miserably, and still

The strange crowd clamoured till late, eddied, clamoured,

Mixed, mused, drifted.4

The spirit of his poem is one of gladness and endurance ‘born-of-agony’, the ability to dance in the rain, yes, but also to be ‘strong-mooded above the day’s inclemency’ – originally the line was ‘strong-mooded above the Time’s inclemency’, emphasising that the rain represented war and mourning.5 The rain becomes a metaphor – ‘The dull skies wept still’.6 ‘The skies were weeping’ in Southampton, while the crowds were singing and cheering.7 But it would be a pleasant night to the north of Britain. In Glasgow it was ‘picturesque’: ‘After the passing of daylight came frost and along with it a filmy haze, not, however, sufficient to obscure the young moon, whose appearance lent a picturesque note to the scene.’8 In parts of Scotland further north, the northern lights, the aurora borealis, could be seen that evening.9 On the Isle of Man, it was a ‘beautiful, calm moonlight night’,10 and as the Isle of Man Weekly Times commented, ‘one may now look up into the starry sky, or out over the silver sea, without feeling that Nature is mocking the sufferings of man’.11

Nature and man shone and sparkled together, the lights in the sky mirroring the lights that were waking up in the streets below. On that Armistice evening, for the first time in a long while, lights came on in the streets across Britain, flashing out happily, some of the unshaded lights coming on as early as 4 p.m. The use of street lights had been banned during the war, so Wilfred Owen’s ‘Disabled’ contrasts an unlit wartime twilight with a pre-war time where ‘Town used to swing so gay / When glow-lamps budded in the light blue trees’.

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