Soldiers of the Great War Known Unto God, Cabaret Rouge Cemetery, Souchez, France. © 2013 by John M. Shea
A Soldier of the Great War Known Unto God
"When the sound of victorious guns burst over London at 11 a.m. on November 11th, 1918, the men and women who looked incredulously into each other's faces did not cry jubilantly: 'We've won the War!' They only said: 'The War is over.' . . .For the first time I realised, with all that full realisation meant, how completely everything that had hitherto made up my life had vanished with Edward and Roland, with Victor and Geoffrey. The War was over; a new age was beginning; but the dead were dead and would never return."
Excerpt from Vera Brittain's Testament of Youth. Brittain served in the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD), on the Western front. Her brother Edward was killed on June 15, 1918 serving with the Royal Artillery on the Italian Front. Roland Leighton had been Brittain's fiancé. He died on December 23, 1915 after being shot by a German sniper while inspecting wire defenses in Hébuterne, France on a moonlit night. Richardson and Thurlow were both friends first of Edward befriended by Brittain. Victor Richardson, was severely wounded in the head on April 9, 1917, in the Battle of Arras. Blind and hospitalized, seemingly recovering, he was visited by Brittain and his family, but died of a cerebral abscess on June 9. Geoffrey Thurlow was killed in action at Monchy-le-Preux, southeast of Arras, on 23rd April 1917.
Testament of Youth: An Autobiographical Study of the Years 1900–1925 by Vera Brittain, pp. 460, 463, copyright © Vera Brittain, 1933, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: 1978, originally 1933
1918-11-11, 1918, November, Known unto God, Soldier of the Great War Known Unto God
