Peace deal signed in a train carriage
Our man Tom in preserved wagon place because it is in the middle of the forest,” he tells me. “He wanted a remote location. It meant there would be calm, isolation and mutual respect.” The wagon arrived on November 7.
Mr Letemps says: “The British delegation arrived at that time, too. The Germans arrived at 8am on November 8. They had to shave in their wagon before they could meet Marshal Foch and Admiral Wemyss. It’s fair to say that it was very tense in there, but it was also respectful.”
Talks had been proposed by Prince Max of Baden, Chancellor of the German Empire, that October, in a letter to the US President, Woodrow Wilson. The Germans were in retreat, outnumbered after the US stepped in to help the Allies. It took until November for Allied leaders to agree the terms of the Armistice in Versailles, near Paris. Four German officials travelled to Compiègne and
boarded a train CIVILISED British setting which coupled with Marshal Foch’s wagon at the forest.
Once there, the German delegation was given the ceasefire terms – complete surrender, hand over of all foreign territory and immediate disarmament.
At 5.20am on November 11, the Armistice was finally signed.
The single official photograph was taken of the opposing factions standing together outside the carriage before Marshal Foch headed back to Paris to report the good news.
The truce, which would halt the combat death toll at a horrific figure of 20 million, became effective at 11am.
A message was passed right along the frontline, “cessez le feu – ceasefire”.
Back in Britain church bells were rung in celebration. JUST as it was 100 years ago, the clearing in the French forest where the First World War came to an end is blissfully silent.
I am in a mahogany panelled railway carriage, sitting in the upright leather chair in which Rosslyn Erskine Wemyss accepted the German surrender on behalf of British forces on November 11, 1918.
The pens and ink wells used to sign the Armistice ceasefire are on the table in front of me, in the same position they were on that historic day.
On side desks are the telephones which aides used to communicate with London, Berlin and Paris during the tense negotiations.
The railway carriage is an exact replica of the orignal, which was destroyed by Hitler’s Stormtroopers at the end of the Second World War.
Six years after the conflict, the French railway authorities moved restaurant wagon 2439D into the spot where the original carriage had been.
The objects and furniture saved for posterity in 1918 had been hidden away by a quick-thinking local official, which is how they can still be seen today.
Bernard Letemps, curator of the Armistice Memorial in Compiègne, granted the Daily Mirror a rare tour of the inside of the wagon.
On November 11, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel will shake hands in the carriage.
In a symbolic gesture of ongoing peace they will sign the final page of the book which contains the original Armistice signatures.
It was Marshal Ferdinand Foch who had selected the isolated location for the Armistice deal, Mr Letemps explains. “Foch chose this