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Remembrance Day

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The history of mankind is stained with the blood of countless battles and wars. History books usually speak of great leaders and brilliant strategists. Remembrance Day is dedicated to the millions of unknown soldiers who lost their lives, especially during the First World War and Second World War.

They Will Never Grow Old

Those who die in combat live on in our memory

To honour the fallen soldiers

The conflict between Austria-Hungary and Serbia in 1914 served as a pretext1 for the First World War. The Allies (Great Britain, France and Russia) fought against the Central Powers (Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire). At the time the Czech lands were part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Many Czechs fled from the Austro-Hungarian army, formed ‘the Legions’ and fought for the Allies.

The First World War ended with the signing of The Armistice2 in France, at 5.00 o’clock on November 11, 1918. It came into effect3 six hours later. Taking it as a symbolic date, at 11.00 o’clock on the Sunday closest to the 11th day of the 11th month many countries around the world commemorate4 those who died in all wars. In the UK and Canada it is called Remembrance Day. Since November 2001 Remembrance Day has also been observed in the Czech Republic to commemorate Czechoslovak patriots who

risked their lives in the fight for freedom and restoration of sovereignty5 .

People who are interested, military and civilian, prominent officials, usually wearing a symbolic red poppy6 , join remembrance services7 that are held at war memorials where wreaths are laid8 . “The Last Post” (a tune that ends the day at an army camp) is played and a minute’s silence is observed9 .

Inscribed10 on many war memorials is part of the poem For the Fallen, written in 1914 by British poet and art critic Laurence

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We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces.

Binyon (1869–1943). It is often recited during remembrance services for its lyrical and straightforward11 message.

Army in the east faced the Allied troops to the west on a battle line stretching16 from Belgium down through France. Between them there was a neutral area called no man’s land17 , which was fenced off18 on both sides by rolls of barbed wire19 . The troops dug in into complex20 trench systems behind the wire.

For the Fallen (1914)

They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning. We will remember them.

During the day things were quite quiet but at night the infantry21 went ‘over the top’ into no man’s land to attack the enemy. In 1917 alone, 70,000 British troops died in the trenches. At that time, the life expectancy of a soldier in the trenches was measured in days rather than weeks or months.

A veteran of the First World War trenches12

Harry Patch, born on June 17, 1898, was the last living survivor of the trenches. Harry had indeed grown old . He was 111 years old when he died on Saturday, July 25, 2009.

What were the conditions like?

Harry was sent with his unit to the front lines13 in France when he was 18 years old. One night in September 1917 a German shrapnel shell14 exploded overhead and seriously wounded him. He returned to England to recover and never went back.

In areas such as Ypres, in Belgium, it was like a continuous hell22 . Attacks were frequent, bodies and body parts were difficult to remove and decayed23 where they lay. There are horrific tales of rats eating corpses24 and even biting soldiers who were sleeping. In the wet winter weather mud was everywhere and mixed with sewage25 . Toilets were just holes in the ground. The unsanitary conditions26 led to diseases such as dysentery27 , typhus and cholera.

Trench warfare – a symbol of the First World War

A high proportion of deaths were the result of disease. Shrapnel from an exploding shell would be covered in mud and pathogenic bacteria (bacteria

The trenches were a military strategy that had tragic consequences for the soldiers on both sides while achieving very little in terms of forward progress15 . The German

the symbol of remembrance

People wear real or artificial poppies in honour of Remembrance Day. The red poppy grew in great numbers in the craters and trenches of the war zone. It became a symbol thanks to a Canadian doctor, John McCrae, who in May 1915 after the second battle of Ypres wrote the poem In Flanders Fields* , the place of battlefields and the resting place of dead soldiers where red poppies grew in abundance30 .

Governments did little to help the injured and confused soldiers who returned from the war. In response, Earl Haig, the Commander in Chief of the British army, founded an organisation to assist soldiers which still exists today as the Royal British Legion. Red poppies are sold as a way of raising funds32 to commemorate those who died and for the welfare of ex-servicemen33 or women and their children.

Harry Patch said that disputes should be settled by discussion rather than war.

In areas such as Ypres, in belgium, fighting in trenches was like a continuous hell. Imagine the vast extent of the trenches when a soldier could walk on battlefields from nieuwpoort in belgium, located three kilometres from the coastline, to the Swiss borders (a distance of around 550 kilometres), without even his helmet standing out over the edge of trenches.

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Front , was written by German writer Erich Maria Remarque.

that cause disease). Antibiotics had not yet been discovered, so a wound, especially in the abdomen28 , was usually fatal in the end. A fungal infection of the feet (trench foot) due to the wet conditions often resulted in gangrene29 and amputation.

It is the story of Paul Bäumer, who together with his friends, joins the German army and fights on the Western Front. It is not a heroic story of bravery, but shows the conditions in which the soldiers found themselves. Young soldiers together with Paul must have asked themselves the reason for all the suffering as the battles fought seemed to be of small significance.

Eye witnesses to life and death in the trenches commented that they thought that the lucky ones were those who died.

All Quiet on the Western Front

‘We are not youth any longer… We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces.’ Nigel Haward (uK) Marie Šormová (Cr)

One of the most famous novels dealing with the First World War, All Quiet on the Western

The most famous literary work about Czech soldiers in the Austro-Hungarian army is the humorous novel The Good Soldier Švejk written by Jaroslav Hašek. The raw description of the war becomes an actual accusation of how human lives are wasted on the battlefields. Illustration © Josef lada – heir, 2008

in honour of the brave

On November 11, 2004 a bronze monument was erected in Vítězné náměstí in Prague to honour the Czechoslovak soldiers who died fighting abroad in both Czechoslovak and Allied armies during the Second World War. The monument is inscribed with places and a map where the soldiers were killed. The area around the monument is paved with granite tiles under which boxes containing soil from different battlefields are stored. A part of the installation is an interactive database giving the names of soldiers, their unit and how they died. It’s a reminder of all the brave men who perished serving their country.

VOCABULARy

22 continuous hell

THE SYMBOL OF REMEMBRANCE
GLOSSARy*

Flanders fields – an area in present-day Belgium, France, and the Netherlands

Zdroj: MATURITA HADR/ANJ/Témata/Témata/Holidays and Celebrations/Remembrance Day/remembranceday.pdf