Tag: Remembrance Day

Armistice Day in Paris – 2008

Armistice Day in Paris: On Tuesday 11th November I was in Paris, having gone there to attend Photo Paris which was opening the next day, but more to go to the many other photography shows taking place in the city that month, both in the Mois de la Photo and the much larger official fringe as well as many other shows in the City not a part of these.

Armistice Day in Paris - 2008
Armistice Day in Paris - 2008

But Armistice Day is a Bank Holiday (Jour Férié) in France, and though that month Paris was full of photography, all of the galleries were closed for the day, so Linda and I mainly spent the day walking around some of our favourite parts of Paris – and of course I took some pictures.

Armistice Day in Paris - 2008

We did a lot of walking most days of our visits to Paris, as most of the exhibitions only opened around the middle of the day and we had breakfasted and were out of our hotel by around 9am.

Armistice Day in Paris - 2008

We’ve always enjoyed walking around Paris. On our first visit together we’d done most of the tourist things, but when we returned for a longer stay in 1973 we walked virtually all of the walks in the old Michelin Green Guide – rather more of them than in later editions.

Armistice Day in Paris - 2008

In more recent years we’ve often been guided by the incredibly detailed ‘The Guide to the Architecture of Parish’ by Norval White, with its 58 walking tours which covers the whole of the city, as well as some downloaded from the web, and one very special guide, Willy Ronis (1910-2009).

Not of course quite in person, though I did meet him once when he came to talk in London, but following his 1990 ‘la traversée de Belleville’, a slim volume recording his show at the bar Floreal where I was given a copy of the book on a visit during this trip. Much of the route was already familiar to me, but we managed to follow his route precisely for our first time on our last day of this 2008 trip.

On Armistice Day 2008 we left our hotel and wandered around the nearby area in the 9e and 10e in the north of Paris be taking the metro to Belleville to wander around there and Ménilmontant, going further south into the 20e, where we stopped for a rest in the café opposite the town hall in Place Gambetta.

We sat inside – it was a chilly day – and I enjoyed a beer while Linda tried to warm herself up with a coffee. Then there was a surprise – as I describe back in 2008:

Suddenly we heard the sound of a brass band, and then saw out of the window an approaching procession, and I picked up my camera and rushed out, leaving Linda to guard my camera bag and half-finished beer.

“Coming across the place and going down the street towards the back of the town hall was a military band leading various dignitaries with red white and blue sashes, a couple of banners, a group of children and a small crowd of adults. It was the union française des associations de combattants, the comité d’entente des associations d’anciens combattants et victimes de guerre along with other associations of patriotic citizens commemorating the 90th anniversary of the official ceasefire (at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month) in 1918, although they were doing it a few hours later in the day.”

The commemoration in November in France is still specifically for the armistice at the end of the First World War, though there “also groups at the parade remembering the French Jews who were deported and mainly died in labour and concentration camps in the Second World War.“

Stupidly in my rush to photograph what was happening I’d left my bag with spare cards inside the cafe, and after a few frames the card in my Leica M8 was full and I had to quickly cull a few images to take new pictures. So my coverage of the event was not quite up to my normal standards.

The event had a very different feel to the Remembrance Day events in this country – such as this one I had photographed the previous year in Staines. There were a few people in uniforms in Paris, but it was very much a citizens’ event rather than being dominated by military and para-military organisations.

From the town hall it was a short walk to the Cimetière du Père-Lachaise where we took a brief stroll, but after a little late afternoon sun it began to rain more heavily and we made our way back to our hotel.

Paris in pouring rain

After a rest there it was time to go out find a cafe for dinner in the Latin Quarter and then to take another short walk, but it was too wet and I took few pictures.

More pictures at:
Le Paris Nord
Ceremonies du 11 novembre
Cimetiere du Pere-Lachaise
Night in the City Centre

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The 11th Hour of the 11th day

All pictures from Staines on 11th November 2007

I have mixed feelings about Remembrance Day. Of course we should remember those who have died in wars, but the events which take place on Remembrance Sunday often seem to glorify war, and rejoice in military victory. Remembrance Day – or Armistice Day as we used to call it – is a day for more sombre observance and reflection, though it often passes most people by. Gone are the days when traffic across the nation stopped and cars pulled to the side of the road to observe the two-minute silence on the “eleventh hour of the eleventh day“.

My father served in the Great War, though he only joined up at the start of 1918. Before he had worked in a munitions factory, but had been laid off, and was called to a medical around his 18th birthday in December 2017. He was examined and the medical officer, after finding he was deaf in one ear asked him if he really wanted to join the army – and only passed him as fit when he said he did.

“I was given the number 119377 and the rank of 3rd Air Mechanic (called 3rd Ack Emma), and awarded the magnificent wage of one shilling plus one penny a day, seven days a week – the extra penny because I was designated Clerk.”

Fortunately for him it wasn’t until July 1918 that he arrived in France, and the airfields had to be a little back from the front line, and they only once came under fire. Dad was impressed by the many nationalities working together – more from his short life story he wrote in his 80s:

“Chinese coolies prepared our sites and probably erected buildings; and of course they dug the petrol holes out. There was every nationality represented amongst the troops and auxiliaries. It was amazing how varied an organisation the armies were. There were lots of horses, mules and bullocks pressed in to do the work. Then there were the Tommies and the Frenchies and all the other fighting men, all colours, marching backwards and forwards – Colonials, Indians, Africans; we had an Empire then!”

And this is his account of the Armistice:

“We were up near Courtrai when the armistice was announced – cwas it alled Bissingham or something like that? We stayed there until after Christmas and a lot of the old hands went home from there. I don’t remember doing much there. I think we had an inkling that it was coming, and I was crossing over to the flight sheds which were old “Jerry” ones when I met a civilian who shouted “La guerre fini ; tres bon, monsieur”; I replied “tres bon, m’sieur”. On Christmas Day we had a concert, and all of us who did not usually do guard duty were detailed to take a two hourly turn throughout the night. I went over to do my turn at the appointed hour. I saw no one there and came away when I thought the time was up.”

As one of the latest to join the war effort, Dad stayed on in what was now the Royal Air Force, becoming a part of the occupying British Army on the Rhine (BAOR) . It was only at the very end of 1919 that he was finally returned to England and demobbed early in 1920 – with back pay of £75 – equivalent to over £3000 allowing for inflation.

Of course Dad had a very easy though not entirely uneventful war compared to most, and he had made his choice to serve, although under conscription. But many of those who went – in this and the Second World War – had little choice. Dad did his bit back at home in the Second World War in various ways too, and a younger member of my wider family was killed in action. But like many I think his experiences of the war left him convinced of its futility, and although at home we observed Remembrance Day respectfully, there was none of the militarism that seems to be a part of the Remembrance Sunday parades which often seem to encourage the anti-German spirit of “Two World Wars and one World Cup”. That Great War was supposed to be the war that ended all wars, but sadly only led to more.

As a Wolf Cub, and later a Boy Scout I had to go and march with the troop and to stand in short trousers in the cutting November wind while bugles sounded and soldiers marched. As a photographer I’ve more recently photographed some of these events, though always with a little reluctance. In quite a few years I’ve been in Paris in November and back in 2013 I was in Germany, where they do not celebrate the armistice, but instead have a more inclusive national day of mourning to remember members of the armed forces of all nations and civilians who died in armed conflicts, and now include victims of violent oppression. As here there are church services and parades to lay flowers at war memorials but it seemed a much healthier event than those in this country.

Remembrance Sunday in Staines 2007