
Listen to the moment the guns fell silent ending World War I - d0mdo0ss
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/listen-moment-guns-fell-silent-ending-world-war-i-180970772/
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hprotagonist
_So this book is a sidewalk strewn with junk, trash which I throw over my
shoulders as I travel in time back to November eleventh, nineteen hundred and
twenty-two.

It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon
millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old
men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way
or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have
among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind._

Vonnegut, "Breakfast of Champions"

~~~
goldcd
"There was no fresh Basil and I got reprimanded for trying to put my Pringles
on the end of the belt before a compatriot had finished bagging"

GoldCD, "Dinners under Corona"

~~~
TheGallopedHigh
Not the place for this type of comment here, sorry.

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billziss
Like others I found the recording profound at first. The birds at the end
cheapened the experience for me because they made me question the authenticity
of the sounds heard and whether this was leaning closer to an actual
representation or an artistic interpretation. Perhaps somewhere in between.

Assuming that this is leaning closer to an actual representation of the sounds
heard on that morning (with the dubious addition of some birds for "dramatic
effect") one thing that I found particularly interesting is the noise/buzz
that can be heard immediately after the guns are silenced. Could it be that
this noise represents the people cheering for the end of war captured by the
crude recording device of oil drums + film?

~~~
Sophistifunk
I can't imagine there was much cheering from those actually at the front. It's
just too big. Cheering is for spectators.

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jtbayly
I didn't find the audio on that page, but a link to it here:
[https://codatocoda.bandcamp.com/album/iwm-ww1-armistice-
inte...](https://codatocoda.bandcamp.com/album/iwm-ww1-armistice-
interpretation-sound-installation)

I want to know if the birds were actually recorded at the end, or if it was
added for dramatic presentation.

~~~
m-i-l
My first thought was that perhaps some of these last minute explosions were
like celebratory gunfire[0]. But no, it seems that people were still
desperately trying to kill each other knowing full well they only had hours,
minutes or even seconds left to do so: "the cease-fire would not come into
effect for a further six hours - at 11am ... the final day of WWI would
produce nearly 11,000 casualties, more than those killed, wounded or missing
on D-Day ... Just minutes before 11am, to the north around Mons, the 25-year-
old Canadian Private George Lawrence Price was on the trail of retreating
German soldiers ... But Pte Price's death at 10.58 was not the last. Further
south in the Argonne region of France, US soldier Henry Gunther was involved
in a final charge against astonished German troops who knew the Armistice was
about to occur. What could they do? He too was shot ... It was 10.59."[0]
Madness.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebratory_gunfire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebratory_gunfire)

[1]
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7696021.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7696021.stm)

~~~
DubiousPusher
I will post this at the risk of being downvoted because I am all but a
pacifist and it is not a popular position. This is not surprising at all for
two reasons.

Despite what films will depict, people fighting on the front lines in a war do
not generally begrudgingly respect each other. They hate eachother in a way
most people probably cannot understand. Many would not pass up the opportunity
to rid the world of what they see as the most evil upon its face unto the very
last minute. The grudging respect you see discussed in documentaries comes
decades later. After the continual trauma and memories of dead friends have
time to fade.

War beaurocracies transform people into rational psychopaths. They create an
order in which a letter of the law is utmost and that letter is laid by your
betters. If your betters find some purpose in ordering you to kill
pointlessly, you will. We all like to think we could find the courage or
clarity to disobey an unethical order. But history is much more full of
compliant atrocities than righteous mutinies. Soldiers kept firing because
that is the perogative that came out of the leadership black box.

~~~
Retric
The 1914 Christmas truce demonstrates otherwise as five months of fighting was
insufficient to guarantee hate.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_truce](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_truce)

It’s surprisingly difficult to train civilians to kill each other, but
governments have discovered how. You don’t do it on the front lines, you do it
before they get to the battle field.

~~~
DubiousPusher
December 1914 was a very different world upon the front lines of WWI from
Movember 1918. People still thought that war would looks something like the
Franco-Prussian War.

> You don’t do it on the front lines, you do it before they get to the battle
> field.

I think you do it by exposing people to years of misery and loss. But a
boatload of propaganda doesn't hurt.

~~~
jimmySixDOF
"You will be home before the leaves have fallen from the trees."

-Kaiser Wilhelm II, addressing German troops leaving for the front, August, 1914.

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andai
Listen to a _recreation_ of the moment the guns fell silent ending World War
I.

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lmilcin
Spoiler alert! It is fake. It is "interpretation".

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bassdigit
Birds sing seconds after ear-blasting gun shots. Really?

~~~
GaryNumanVevo
It's an interpretation of audio recorded to film

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wideasleep1
"Look mommy...there's an airplane up in the sky..."

~~~
g105b
Did you see the frightened ones?

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cabernal
I understand that this is an interpretation, but fascinating nonetheless. Are
there other examples (or archives) of this type of historical recordings?

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ainiriand
Not only it is a recreation, but also an exposition conducted almost 2 years
ago, in commemoration of the end of WWI.

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lokl
As long as we're discussing fictional works about WWI, two great movies are La
Grande Illusion and Paths of Glory.

~~~
handojin
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the
haunting flares we turned our backs, And towards our distant rest began to
trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots, But limped on, blood-
shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of
gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling Fitting the clumsy helmets just
in time, But someone still was yelling out and stumbling And flound’ring like
a man in fire or lime.— Dim through the misty panes and thick green light, As
under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering,
choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace Behind the wagon that we
flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face,
like a devil’s sick of sin; If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come
gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,— My friend, you would not tell
with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie:
Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.

~~~
4weekoldroses
Which is this from? I would like to read it.

~~~
handojin
Wilfred Owen, 'Dulce et Decorum est.' That's it for that poem but he wrote
more.

