The day the ‘war to end war’ ended
One hundred years ago Sunday, the Great War came to an end after four years and three months of the greatest human carnage in history. Many hit the streets in celebration, but others found it bittersweet after so much misery
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CAN TRY but no one today could possibly fully comprehend what it was like 100 years ago to finally hear news that the so-called “war to end all wars” had finally ended.
The front page of The Hamilton Spectator beamed with a headline “‘CEASE FIRING’ REJOICING THROUGHOUT THE WORLD OVER SURRENDER OF GERMANY TO THE ALLIES.”
And in Hamilton, the newspaper said, “Whistles shrieked, bells clanged, thousands paraded streets in lid-lifting celebration.
“Those who were on the streets raced frantically up and down throwing hats into the air, embracing each other and volleying cheer after cheer along the main thoroughfares.”
Hamilton Mayor Charles Booker proclaimed the day a public holiday.
But most had already decided to take the day off “as the glad news disseminated, spreading like fire in a cornfield, bells rang, factory sirens shrieked, klaxons (clacked) and — whoopee — high carnival reigned, while the city shook to the tune of it,” the newspaper said.
But it was also bittersweet, as memories of lost loved ones were recalled amid new announcements of further casualties from the last breaths of the war.
McMaster University history professor Ian McKay says: “I think there was some euphoria but it was mixed with a sense of grief and shock.
“I think a lot of returning soldiers surprised people with their anger.
“They had been promised so much and so little had been given to them.
“People wanted the image of heroic soldiers but they weren’t so keen on the wounded veterans.”
Military historian and author Tim Cook says: “The war is utterly unique for Canada. It was a shocking event. No one expected the war. No one expected the war to go on for so long. No one expected that it would be so costly.”
Not far from the bold Page One Spectator headline proclaiming the war’s end, was a secondary article noting that the dying continued right up to the end and sadly “six local heroes” had been reported killed.
Another story further connected melancholy to the mania.
“Joyless came the dawn of peace to Walter P. Hendershot, 141 Hunter Street east, for during the weekend a message reached him announcing that one of his two soldier boys, Pte. Frew W. Hendershot had been killed in action while serving in ... France.”
One name that was still to come on the killed-in-action list was Hamiltonian Maurice Cameron Roberts. He died Nov. 10, in a last battle of the war, hours from when the ceasefire was called the next day.
He was commanding A Company of the 19th battalion in Hyon in Belgium when he was cut down by a hail of machine gunfire. He was 21 and before the war was a student at the Law Society of Upper Canada.
He never lived to see the famous wire message: Hostilities will cease at 11.00 hours November 11th. Troops will stand fast on the line reached at that time, which will be reported to Divisional H. Q.s immediately. Defensive precautions will be maintained. There will be no intercourse with the enemy of any description. Further instructions will follow.
Nor did he come to know about the anger afterwards directed at military planners for sending troops into slaughter in the Hyon campaign when it was so clear the war was ending. The battalion lost 17 soldiers and four officers in the closing hours of the war.
The recently published book “It Can’t Last forever: The 19th Battalion and the Canadian Corps in the First World War,” by David Campbell, quotes soldier Lt. Charles H. Mitchell as saying: “We kind of stood around and didn’t know what to make of it. The Armistice was on and the war was over and you couldn’t realize that anything like that could happen. You were hypnotized. You just couldn’t realize anything.
“I mean you were wondering what it was all about. You were fighting the day before, and men being killed, and the next day the war is all finished. Things went through your mind like that. It was impossible to realize that the war was over.”
In Hamilton, Robert “Doc” Fraser, the regimental historian for the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders (the Canadian regiment that perpetuates the 19th battalion), says: “The response was ecstatic. The celebration in downtown Hamilton was exuberant, the sense of relief palpable.”
Hamiltonians were hugely committed to the war, he said, with at least 10 per cent of the population involved in the conflict. “Probably every family in Hamilton had someone in uniform, and many of them never returned.”
And virtually everyone in the city had at least one family member or close friend who was killed at some point in the war. Of the estimated 10 million military deaths to all sides, 1,748 of them were from Hamilton, names that today can be found inside a metal tube inside the cenotaph in Gore Park.
Interestingly, news of the war’s end was prematurely announced in the city after both The Spectator and The Hamilton Herald received false wire service reports on Nov. 7 of an armistice agreement.
Both papers hit the street with extra editions with a Spec headline saying “It is finished” and the Herald saying “War is over, truce signed.”
Tens of thousands of jubilant people took to the streets with flags, streamers and confetti until later in the evening when wire services corrected the report to say the war was ongoing and both newspapers placed bulletins outside their offices.
One name that was still to come on the killed in action list was Hamiltonian Maurice Cameron Roberts. He died Nov. 10, in a last battle of the war, hours from when the ceasefire was called … cut down by a hail of machine gunfire