A century after fighting for Paris, leaders mark armistice there
Paris, the City of Light, always was the grandest prize of the First World War, either to conquer or defend.
So it is only fitting that when victors and vanquished meet to mark the centennial of the armistice this weekend, the biggest ceremony should be on the famed Champs-Élysées at the Arc de Triomphe.
On Friday, some leaders began remembrance events in a wide crescent of cemeteries and trench-rutted battlefields north of the capital.
British Prime Minister Theresa May laid wreaths for the first and last British soldier killed in the fighting — the two were buried across from one another in southern Belgium. One grave holds the remains of Pte. John Parr, killed Aug. 21, 1914. The other is of Pte. George Ellison, who survived some of the war’s worst battles but was shot on Nov. 11, 1918 — the war’s last day.
French President Emmanuel Macron continued his pilgrimage of First World War sites and caught up with May, as the two present-day leaders of the Allied forces that defeated Germany walked past graves at the Thiepval memorial.
“Each cemetery and memorial across the world is a unique and poignant reminder of the cost of the First World War,” said May.
Sixty-nine heads of state and government, including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Donald Trump, will underscore that message at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Paris on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month on Sunday, exactly a century after the armistice.
Nearly 10 million soldiers died, often in brutal trench warfare where poison gas added a cruelty in warfare that the world had never seen.
Carrying the heritage of defeated Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel will visit the site in the woods north of Paris where military leaders agreed in a train carriage to the armistice.