Monday, November 11, 2024

106 years marks the Armistice. The end of World War I at 1100h.  Woke to the orange light of the sky on the horizon above the trucks.

After breakfast and coffee Giulia and I went outside for a walk. Slightly cloudy and no wind. I got Mac and rode him on the lawn in a halter. Looked at the mountains stark there. 

Then I started the truck and we drove south in the light to the hall. The parking lot was full and the people all inside, the wooden walls of the community gathering place. Inside people sat in the little wooden school chairs, the old kind, like the one I have in the mud room that was left on the side of the road. I recognized people from town. And a woman came up front and talked about her son in the army, and a man played guitar in front of all. Then we went outside, to the monument, the names of all those who served. And their names were listed, many of them, and after that a moment of silence, but it was not 11 yet. There was no wind, there, then, and the mountains were magnificent as ever. And after that everyone gathered and chatted. I spoke to Frank Zieffle and asked him who Richard Zieffle was, the name that was mentioned, inscribed on the monument. His uncle, he said. We spoke for a time and went inside for coffee, gathered around some more. And then Giulia and I drove back. In the peaceful November light.

I gathered Tini and brushed her and got her bridle and got on. Walked her around and trotted and loped. And it was so good and so peaceful. Watching the mountains. Thankful. And thinking to Ina with her son my age, at war. Vitalyk, whose lungs were burnt of gas, granting him some weeks home, away from war, before returning again. How brutal are the machines of war, instilling fear in thy neighbour, atrocities most of us have only heard about, and never seen. 

In the evening we watched All Quiet on the Western Front, a movie I purchased on Saturday night without thinking to the date. How fitting it was, a movie set on the days leading up to the armistice, chilling and surreal, unfathomable. The movie made me shake. And afterwords, in the dark of night, I took Giulia outside to look at the mountains, unmoving, once more. Lest We Forget.

All Quiet on the Western Front (2022)

All Quiet on the Western Front (2022)