11-11-11-11-11

On the 11th minute of 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 a permanent ceasefire was called along the Eastern and Western fronts, although opposing troops continued to shoot at each other for several hours after the armistice ended the four-year War To End All Wars conflict and even longer in the far reaches of the global war.

11-11-11 occurs once a century.

Someone in the armistice committee must have been heavily influenced by numerology to have chosen this powerful progression of the first prime number.

As if this magical combination was powerful enough to stop soldiers from killing each other.

George Lawrence Price was hit by the sniper's bullet at 10:58 and the Canadian is thought to be the Great War's last casualty.

Of course the time could have been a coincidences like 9/11/2001.

Today the major combatant nations of World War I commemorated their fallen dead.

Over 65 million soldiers participated in the struggle.

My grandfather and grandmother both served in France for the Canadian Medical expedition. As my grandmother was disembarking at Le Havre, she stumbled coming down the steep gangplank. My grandfather stopped her fall and helped her onto the dock They served as doctor and nurse along with my Aunt Marion at Epinay tending to thousands of wounded and dying. After the outbreak of Spanish Flu in 1917, the three of them returned home on an ocean liner together. Captain Smith and Nurse Hamblin married soon after their arrival in Maine. The two veterans lived together for thirty-two years. My grandfather died the year I was born and my grandmother twenty years later. My grandfather died shortly after my birth, but my grandmother never spoke of her years tending to the wounded and dying soldiers. She never mentioned how the shooting went on well beyond the ceasefire hour, only how she met my grandfather and how they fell in love.

Today I thank them that I've never had to fire a shot in anger and appreciate the sacrifice of the fallen so that I can remain a pacifist.My grandmother never spoke of her years tending to the wounded and dying soldiers, only how she met my grandfather and how they fell in love, as he reched out to her on the gangway landing in France.

Today I thank them that I've never had to fire a shot in anger and appreciate the sacrifice of the fallen, so that I remain a pacifist.

She was the last World War I vets I knew.

The last veteran to serve in the trenches was Harry Patch (British Army) who died on 25 July 2009, aged 111 and the last Central Powers veteran, Franz Künstler of Austria-Hungary, died on 27 May 2008 at the age of 107.

The last surviving veteran was Claude Choules, who served Royal Navy during WW1, who died in 2011 aged 110. Rest in peace, soldiers!

Peace will come one day.