Remembrance: Daddy Is Coming Home
When the Great War came to an end it was not just soldiers on the battlefields who celebrated the close of hostilities; hundreds of thousands of families back home could begin to hope that finally their loved one would be coming home.
This image dates from the time of 11th November 1918 and shows a trio of young children, patriotic flags in their hands, rejoicing of the thought that daddy was on his way home. The little one looks pensive, apprehensive – perhaps she knows only daddy by name and can remember little of him in her short life. The survivors and their families like this were told the men of that generation were returning to ‘Homes Fit for Heroes’ but the reality was that economic depression and streets with medal wearing veterans selling matches was what really lay ahead. The hope in these faces was betrayed, and the children depicted in images like this were fighting another war just a couple of decades later.
Remembrance: The Armistice 11 November 1918
The Armistice came into effect at 11.00am on 11th November 1918 and effectively brought the fighting on the Western Front to a close. In more than four years of war Britain and the Empire had lost more than 750,000 dead in France and Flanders, with many times that wounded and sick. Just after 11am across the old battlefields British units gathered to commemorate the end of the conflict for them; all did it in different ways and some went to great lengths to record the event with a photograph. Here a group of men from the Ordnance Base Depot of the Army Ordnance Corps (AOC) were photographed together on that fateful day.
Others marked the day in a more robust way. Below a veteran of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers remembers 11th November 1918 near Courtrai in Belgium; the interview is taken from a recording made in 1982.
Great War Photos 