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