The Road to Armistice

Half way between La Capelle and Haudroy on the D285 is a monument connected to the final days of the war.

On 8 August 1918 General Sir Douglas Haig had launched the Battle of Amiens. This began a period known as the hundred days during which. the German Army, now over extended and in short supply of men and supplies, was pushed steadily back towards the Belgian frontier.

On the right of the British Armies the French retook the Chemin des Dames - scene of their disastrous offensive in 1917 - and fighting alongside the American Expeditionary Force, pushed on towards the Belgian border.

Trouble in Germany

On 4 November 1918 attempts by the German army to quell a mutiny by the sailors of the High Seas Fleet ended with the soldiers joining the sailors (who were declining the chance to have one last fight to the death with the British Royal Navy).

That same day at Ors on the Sambre Canal three notable victims to the fighting fell and now lay buried together in the village communal cemetery. The poet Lieutenant Wilfred Owen, Captain James Kirk VC and Lt Colonel James Marshal VC.

Wilfred Owen's grave at Ors Communal Cemetery

The German Delegation

On the morning of 7 November 1918 a delegation under Matthias Erzberger one of the new political leaders arrived at the German GHQ in the Belgian town of Spa.

Erzberger was a rather reluctant leader fully aware that the results of any negotiations would be laid at his doorstep and not the military's. His thoughts were quite prophetic, because on 26 August 1921 he was assassinated by fanatics. Part of the rise of Hitler was borne on the idea that it had been the civilian government that had humiliated and betrayed Germany - not the Army, who had been unbeaten in the field and remained on foreign soil at the time of the Armistice.

At noon following the transmission of messages to Marshal Foch advising him of events, the German deputation set out.

Thus the war was to come full circle. In 1914 General von Moltke had set things in motion. He was the nephew of the victorious Prussian general of the 1870 war against France. Now, General von Winterfeldt, the son of the man who had dictated the terms of France's surrender in 1870, was to act as the military delegate to his own country's armistice negotiations.

La Pierre d'Haudroy

At 20:20 hours four cars, with full headlights and displaying white flags, approached the French lines at La Pierre d'Haudroy.

They were met by soldiers of the 1st Battalion of the 171st RI (Infantry Regiment) from Belfort. A Bugler called Pierre Sellier riding on the duckboard of the first German car travelled with the Germans sounding the cease fire as they drove through the French lines.

The party was met by the Commandant of the Battalion: Captain Lhuillier who had them conducted to the railway station at Tergnier arriving at 03:15 hours. The delegation was put on board a carriage with covered windows and accompanied to Marshal Foch's HQ in the forest at Rethondes near the town of Compiègne.

The Armistice Negotiations at Rethondes

11 November 1918 was a cold wet and miserable day. At La Pierre d'Haudroy, it was the same bugler: Caporal Sellier, who sounded the end of the war to end all wars. After 51 months of war France had lost 1 400 000 killed and 600 000 wounded.

The Monument

To mark the location a monument in Vosges granite was erected on 5 November 1925. For the next 23 years until his death Pierre Sellier returned to sound the Cease Fire on the anniversary of the Armistice.

The monument was deemed offensive to the Germans and was one of the first things they blew up in 1940 - on 14 August.

The monument was reconstructed and inaugurated on 14 November 1948, and it is this that you can see today.

The inscription tells how:

1918, 7 November, 20:20 hours
Here, the tenacity of the poilu triumphed

At the base are tablets telling the story of the construction, destruction and replacement of the monument.

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Canada's last casualty of the war
France's last casualty of the war