By Kareem Gomersall, Y11
November 11th, 1918 officially marked the end of the First World War, the global conflict that divided the world. It claimed 17 million lives, making it the third bloodiest conflict in history, after the Second World War and the Mongol conquests.
101 years later, we remember all those who lost their lives in the conflict; in Britain, a red poppy pin is worn, based on the poem “In Flanders Fields” by John McCrae. The poppy is symbolic, since after the war, the soil was enriched with lime from all the debris and rubble from left by the war. From this dirt and mud, fields full of poppies grew, stretching from Belgium to France.
After the start of the war, both sides dug trenches to camp in through the winter; but the recently invented modern machine gun was able to obliterate any army attempting to overrun the enemy trench. One after another, each army would try to take the other trench, but with no success. This long and bloody stalemate was the main reason for the great loss of life on both sides of the war.
It is important that we continue to honour those who perished in the First World War, and continue to strive for peace and collaboration as a means to avoid such horrible tragedies in the future.
