tanks for that, Anne, lovely story.

Cheers, geoff

>On Fri, 24 Dec 2010 20:05:07 +1100, Geoffrey Heard
><[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>>>Anne
>>
>>Hmmm -- on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the
>>11th month, we in Oz have Remembrance Day ...
>>marking the end of WWI, a war in whcih between
>>50,000 and 60,000 Australians (well, Australian
>>residents, a lot of them were immigrants) died.
>>In fact, more than twice as many Australian died
>>in WWI than in WWII. Amazing carnage in WWI.
>>
>>Cheers (or something), geoff
>
>I seldom go to this 11.11. Carnival thing, but it happens. Once, around 1990,
>there was this old gentleman standing there, and saying the same thing: on
>11.11 one should remember the dead of WWI, where he had been a young
>recruit during the last months of that war, the worst carnage anyone had seen
>up to then.
>It was very impressive, because one of the organizer then climbed on the
>shoulders of another in the three minutes silence which precede the
>11.11.11.11 cacophony and said:
>«Can anybody play a funereal march?»
>Somebody could.
>So when 11h11' came, this group played the march, and the whole place went
>on its knees.
>And then there was a long silence. And then there was the cacophony.
>Switzerland, which was neutral, «only» lost a couple of hundred people in WWI
>(either on the border or because they were fighting in foreign armies).They
>are quite forgotten now, I must say.
>But that day, it was very moving.
>(By the way, the 11.11.11.11 tradition was already there before WWI, or so I
>have been told).
>Season's greetings again.
>Anne