It is November 16, 1918, five days after the World War I armistice was signed.
Allison LePontois, a college student before the war, is in France where he serves as an ambulance driver.
Here is his diary entry for that day:
“On the night of Nov. 9th I stood in front of the dressing station in Beaumont,
the town formed for the last French battle prior to Sedan in 1870,
watching the glow in the horizon where Sedan was burning.
Sedan which saw the beginning of the Hohenzollern dream of an empire,
this morning figuratively and literally represents the ashes of that empire.
Two days later I stood on the same spot
listening to what I now believe to have been the last shots of the war.
Inside the church which had been converted into a [wound] dressing station
were lying those who had been wounded after the armistice had been signed.
Just at eleven someone with an inspiration
began the Star Spangled Banner on the organ.
Instantly, except for the moans of the unconscious men,
the strains of the national anthem, which although played softly,
filled the room with its song of freedom, the place became silent.
It was a moment I shall never forget.
Many a tear showed its course down an unwashed cheek.
An officer, performing an operation,
stopped and straightened up,
his hand holding the knife shaking
as if he were stricken with the palsy.
As the organ struck the last bars of our national song
we, who were uninjured stood proudly at attention
and as the music ceased and the work continued
could not help to realize,
as I know many others did,
that after all it was worth while.
Going back that evening
past the battlefield of the day before
and seeing those mute corpses strewn here and there,
I thought of words of Christ at the Last Supper,
‘This is my body which is broken for you.’”
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I’ll see you tomorrow.
— Brenda
Allison’s daughters donated their father’s diary to the Crile Archive Center for History Education at Cuyahoga Community College in Ohio.
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